
Class. 
Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



THE BRITISH EMPIRE 

AND 

THE UNITED STATES 



THE BRITISH EMPIRE 

AND 

THE UNITED STATES 

A REVIEW OF THEIR RELATIONS DURING THE CEN- 
TURY OF PEACE FOLLOWING THE TREATY OF GHENT 

BY 

WILLIAM ARCHIBALD DUNNING 

LIEBER PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 

IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 

SOMETIME PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE VISCOUNT BRYCE, O.M. 

AND A PREFACE BY 

NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 

PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
1914 






Copyright, 1914, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

Published October, 1914 



©CI.A3S8007 




OCT 21 ni4 



nui , 



PREFACE 

Under the happiest auspices and with the 
hearty co-operation of the leaders of opinion 
throughout the British Empire and in the 
United States, plans have been made for an 
adequate and dignified celebration of the im- 
pressive fact that for one hundred years the 
English-speaking peoples throughout the world 
have been at peace with one another. The 
impressiveness of this fact is heightened by the 
circumstances leading up to and attending 
the American Revolution and by those which 
relate to the War of 1812. With the exception 
of the short contest of 1898 with Spain, which 
contest had its origin in purely American con- 
ditions, the United States has been not only 
at peace, but usually in the friendliest possible 
relations with Germany, France, Russia, Italy, 
and the other nations of continental Europe. 
On the other hand, there have been many and 
frequent occasions when public opinion, either 
in Great Britain or in the United States, or in 
both, has been deeply stirred by some difference 



vi PREFACE 

of view or by some Incident of diplomatic con- 
troversy, frhere have been more tempting oc- 
casions for misunderstanding and armed con- 
flict between the British Empire and the United 
States than between the United States and 
all other nations of the earth comblnedA The 
points of contact between the British l!mpire 
and the United States are many, and each point 
of contact Is a point of possible friction. Their 
commercial interests are often in keen rivalry. 
In times past thelrterrltorial ambitions have been 
In sharp conflict with each other. Notwithstand- 
ing, a full hundred years has passed during which 
war between them has been avoided. This fact is 
of itself an eloquent testimony to the temper and 
self-restraint of the English-speaking peoples and 
a noble tribute to the statesmen who have In 
succession guided their policies and conducted 
their international business. The long Invisible 
line which separates the United States and the 
Dominion of Canada has been left unguarded 
despite the fact that two energetic, rapidly ex- 
panding peoples have been pushing steadily west- 
ward on either side of it. This long, invisible, 
unguarded line is the most convincing testimony 
that the world has to offer to the ability of 
modern self-disciplined peoples to keep the 



PREFACE vli 

peace. It affords an example which it is not 
unreasonable to hope may one day be univer- 
sally followed. 

As part of the celebration of one hundred 
years of peace between the British Empire 
and the United States, the committees in charge 
planned a historical review of the relations be- 
tween the two countries since the signing of the 
Treaty of Ghent. This delicate and difficult task 
was committed to William Archibald Dunning, 
Lieber Professor of History and Political Phi- 
losophy in Columbia University, and at the 
time President of the American Historical 
Association. With what clearness, cogency, and 
impartiality Professor Dunning has fulfilled 
his task the pages that follow amply testify. 
It has been his purpose to 

". . . Nothing extenuate, 

Nor set down aught in malice. . . ." 

He has made no attempt to minimize or to 
gloss over the differences that have arisen 
between the two peoples, the grounds or causes 
for those differences, or the errors of judgment 
that may have been committed in attempting 
to resolve them. The result is a survey of the 
past century which is full of encouragement 



viii PREFACE 

for those who are longing for the day when 
justice and not force shall rule the destinies of 
the world. If disputes such as are here traced 
and recounted can be adjusted without war; if 
differences of temperament, of ambition, and 
of interest such as are here described can be 
settled without armed conflict; if points of honor 
and of national pride like those here presented 
can be satisfactorily met without the shedding 
of innocent human blood, then surely there is 
no limit to what may be hoped for in the cen- 
tury that is to come. The United States has 
sedulously followed the earnest injunction of 
Washington in maintaining friendly relations 
with all nations while entering into alliance 
with none. Having been itself carved by revo- 
lution from the side of the British Empire, it 
is but natural that both the bonds of friend- 
ship and the causes for jealousy should be more 
numerous between the United States and the 
British Empire than between the United States 
and any other people. This is a plain histor- 
ical fact which must be accepted by those who 
guide opinion and who frame public policies. 

Friendship, close intercourse, and peace be- 
tween the English-speaking peoples involve 
no antagonism to the interests or influence of 



PREFACE ix 

Other nations. On the contrary, they are but 
the beginning of a new world order when neither 
differences of speech, nor of race, nor of creed 
shall longer be permitted to sow dissension 
among civilized men, or to arouse human pas- 
sion to an extent where human reason cannot 
control it and direct it toward the goal of jus- 
tice, of human sympathy, and of a peace which 
is lasting because it rests upon a secure eco- 
nomic and ethical foundation. 

Nicholas Murray Butler. 

Columbia University, 
June 4, 1 91 4. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PACE 

Readjustment After War i 

Signing of the Treaty of Ghent — Power and importance of 
Great Britain — Weakness and insignificance of the United 
States — European expectation that the American Republic 
would be short-lived — Contrasting views of Tories and Whigs 
as to the Americans — Peace the only important matter settled 
at Ghent — Rejoicing over the Treaty in the United States — 
Treaty attracts slight interest in Great Britain — Canadians 
develop a patriotic tradition of the war — Diverse British views 
as to the future of Canada — Commercial convention of 1815 
between Great Britain and the United States — Rivalry in fleet- 
building on the Great Lakes at the end of the war — Proposals 
for disarmament discussed by Adams and Castlereagh — Con- 
clusion of the Rush-Bagot Arrangement of 18 17 — The rival 
fleets on the Great Lakes voluntarily destroyed — Conciliatory 
attitude of Castlereagh in London and Bagot in Washington — 
Conclusion of the Treaty of 18 18 between Great Britain and 
the United States — Positions and proposals of the two govern- 
ments as to the right of search — Draft agreement on the sub- 
ject fails ultimately of adoption — Peril to peace in the opposing 
views tenaciously maintained — Agreement in the Treaty of 
18 18 as to the North Atlantic fisheries — Nature of the disputes 
on this subject — Claims respectively of Americans and British 
— Limited liberty of inshore fishing recognized to Americans — ' 
Agreement as to boundary from Lake of the Woods to the Pa- 
cific — Oregon territory left open to both British and Americans 
— Difficulties as to the northeastern boundary of the United 
States as defined in the Treaty of 1783 — Progress in defining 
the line before i8i2 — Failure to agree by commissioners under 
Treaty of Ghent — Arbitration of King of Netherlands fails of 
acceptance — Correct and friendly character of diplomatic 
intercourse after the war — Anti-British feeling among Amer- 
icans in the Mississippi valley — Basis of this feeling in British 
alliance with the Indians — Disturbing influence of Andrew 



xii CONTENTS 



Jackson's proceedings in Florida — Military execution of 
Arbuthnot and Ambrister — Indignation in the British press 
and populace — Cabinet ultimately concedes that victims had 
forfeited right to protection — Conflicting commercial interests 
of Great Britain and the United States — Americans favor free- 
dom of commerce, British maintain restrictive system — Agree- 
ment to abandon discriminating duties, 1815 — The doctrines of 
Adam Smith and Bentham promote economic and political 
reform in Great Britain — America exhibits these doctrines in 
practice — Reform in Britain, therefore, means approach to the 
American practice. 



CHAPTER II 
Whig Reform and Jacksonian Democracy . . 46 

Personality and policies of John Quincy Adams and George 
Canning — The European situation that produced the Monroe 
Doctrine — Canning's suggestion and Monroe's message as to 
intervention — Effect of Monroe's pronouncement; Canning's 
dissatisfaction — Monroe's message as to colonization; Canning's 
protest — Influence and spirit of John Quincy Adams in the 
matter — Canning's fear of an American alliance against Europe 
— Tension between British and American governments over 
commerce in West Indies — Improved relations after death of 
Canning and displacement of Adams by Andrew Jackson — 
Whig ministry of Earl Grey supplants Tories in Great Britain — 
Movement for economic and political reform in Great Britain 
after the fall of Napoleon: Whigs and Radicals — Liberalizing 
trend of Canning's policy; Navigation Laws relaxed — Restrict- 
ive labor laws repealed — Protective corn laws assailed but suc- 
cessfully defended by Tories — Catholic emancipation carried by 
O'Connell, 1S29; effects in Ireland and in Great Britain — Par- 
liamentary reform carried, 1832 — American sympathy with 
Whig and Radical politics — Abolition of West Indian slavery 
and regulation of impressment — Futile negotiations between 
Great Britain and the United States for joint action in sup- 
pressing the African slave-trade — Influence of the claim to right 
of search and impressment — Influence of British abolitionism on 
South in United States — America adopts protective tariff 
for manufactures — Protectionism defeated by Southern slave- 
holders — Era of Andrew Jackson: traits of the American people 
at that time — The democracy versus the expert: Jackson versus 
the Bank — The democracy and the administration of govern- 
ment: the Spoils System — Britishliterary judgments of the Amer- 
icans under the Tory ascendancy — Less unfavorable judgments 



CONTENTS xiii 



after 1832: Harriet Martineau; Tocqueville — Richard Cobden's 
views in the thirties — American opinions of British formed by 
observation of immigrants — ^Judgments due to this fact and 
to the treatment of the Chartists. 



CHAPTER III 
The Roaring Forties: Polk and Palmerston . 88 

Van Burcn and Victoria at the head of the governments in 1837 
— Political ebullition in the Canadas — Conflict of the races in 
Lower Canada — United Empire Loyalists versus later-comers 
in Upper Canada — Insurrections of Papincau and Mackenzie, 
1837 — Defeated insurgents make raids from United States — 
Steamer Caroline destroyed on American side by Canadian 
troops — Arrest of McLeod in New York for complicity, 1840 — 
Extreme tension and ill feeling till his acquittal, 1841 — Simul- 
taneous grounds of ill feeling in Maine, Texas, and Oregon — 
Lord Durham's mission and report as to Canada — His com- 
parison of the Canadas and the United States — Views of Rad- 
icals and of Cobden as to future of colonies — Durham favors 
policy looking to Canadian nationality — Union of the two 
Canadas by constitution of 1841 — Failure of arbitration and 
negotiation as to the northeastern boundary of the United 
States — New Brunswick lumbermen and Maine militia: the 
Aroostook War — Renewed diplomacy, more surveys, no agree- 
ment — American Whigs in power at Washington; British 
Whigs out of power at London — Webster secretary of state; 
Aberdeen succeeds the truculent Palmerston — Friction over 
search of American ships by British slave-trade patrol — Web- 
ster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842: criticised by British, Americans, 
and Canadians — Controversies settled by it — Conventional 
line fixed between Maine and New Brunswick — The red-line 
map and other maps — ^Joint patrol of the African slave coast 
agreed to — The diplomatic debate over search, visitation, and 
approach — The popular forces behind the diplomacy — Webster 
sets impressment over against slavery — The case of the Creole — 
American expansionist movements bring friction in the South 
and the West — British policy as to Texas — Annexation to 
United States strongly opposed by Aberdeen — Anti-British 
feeling strong among American annexationists — British and 
American fur-traders in Oregon — Missionaries and settlers 
from the East enter by the Oregon Trail — Popular demand in 
the United States for the whole of the Oregon territory: "fifty- 
four forty or fight" — President Polk indicates a positive atti- 
tude — Buchanan-Pakenham negotiations for division of region, 



xiv CONTENTS 

PAGE 

1845 — Polk's belligerent message of 1845 — His extension of the 
Monroe Doctrine — Joint occupation denounced by United 
States — Treaty of June 15, 1846 — The war between the United 
States and Mexico — Polk's purpose to secure California lest 
Great Britain acquire it — Aberdeen eager to keep it from the 
United States — Mexico rejects his advice to refrain from war — 
Aberdeen abandons California policy — Idealistic basis of the 
American movement to Oregon and California — The democ- 
racy's sense of power and craving for bigness — Discovery of 
gold an amazing coincidence, confirming destiny — Compara- 
tive population: Great Britain, 27,000,000; United States, 
20,000,000— No need for more territory for American population 
— Dependence of British industry and commerce on the United 
States— Danger of famine in the United Kingdom — American 
sentiment on O'Connell's Irish agitation — Peel's policy of 
abolishing the protective tariff — Cobden and the Anti-Corn- 
Law League — Democratic agitation involved in the activity 
of the League — Corn Laws repealed in 1846 — The Tory min- 
istry gives way to the Whigs under Russell and Palmerston — 
The great famine in Ireland and its effects on America. 



CHAPTER IV 
Through Threefold Tension to Harmony . . 149 

Singular importance of the month of February', 1848 — Emigra- 
tion from revolutionary Europe to Great Britain and America — 
German immigration into United States rivals Irish — The pop- 
ular foreign policy of Lord Palmerston — Manchester school of 
Cobden and Bright oppose Palmerston — His triumph in the 
Don Pacifico debate and after — Contrast of Polk and Palmer- 
ston — Importance of transisthmian communication after 
Mexican War — British protectorate over the Mosquitos used 
to control Nicaragua route — Treaty of 1846 with New Granada 
gives United States control of Panama — Critical situation at 
the island of Tigre — Danger removed by the Clayton-Bulwer 
Treaty, April 19, 1850 — Purpose and content of the treaty — 
Controversies over its meaning — Settlement in i860 by with- 
drawal of Great Britain froni Mosquito coast — Joint guarantee 
of protection fails to bring construction of canal — Filibustering 
projects against Latin America — British suggestion for stopping 
them resented by United States — Anti-British feeling in 
Democratic party due to Irish and slaveholders — Effect of the 
Crimean War on American opinion — Enlistment of recruits for 
British army in the United States — Dismissal of Crampton the 
British minister — Revival of discussion of the right of search — 
American view formally accepted by the British Government — 



CONTENTS XV 



PAGE 



Effect of this on the slave-trade and impressment — Canadian 
problems under the constitution of 1841 — Policy of Lord Elgin 
assures responsible government — Conflict between French and 
English interests — Industrial and commercial depression in 1849 
— Effect on Canada of Peel's free-trade policy — Agitation for 
annexation to United States — Party politics at the basis of the 
agitation — American indifference to the movement — British 
political leaders expect ultimate separation of Canada — Lord 
John Russell's speech on the subject — Protest of Lord Elgin — 
Disintegrating elements in the philosophy of the free-trade 
movement — Canadian situation brings final repeal of British 
Navigation Laws — Importance to Canada of trade with United 
States — Dissatisfaction in United States at limits upon the in- 
shore fisheries — Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 results from this 
situation — Effects of the Treaty on relations between Canada 
and America — Comparative numbers of English-speaking peo- 
ples in i860 — Economic leadership of Great Britain — Demo- 
cratic movement in British politics — Effects of great migrations 
on Britain and America — Influence of the Irish in America — 
Growth and influence of American literature — Harmonizing 
influence of the British mid-Victorians, especially Dickens. 



CHAPTER V 
The American Civil War and Its Effects . 199 

Influence of slavery on British feeling toward the warring sec- 
tions — Southern argument for independence — Northern coun- 
ter argument — DifHculty experienced by the other English- 
speaking peoples in choosing between these arguments — The 
British belief that a great democracy could not endure — Favor 
for the South due to this belief and to the Southern preference 
for free trade — Slavery a source of suspicion toward the South 
— Influence of British antislavery leaders like Cobden and 
Bright — British proclamation of neutrality and its grounds — 
Resentment in the North at the British position — Attitude of 
the British cabinet toward the Southern demand for recog- 
nition — Resentment of the South at this position — The Trent 
affair of November, 1861 — American rejoicings at the act of 
Captain Wilkes — Indignation and warlike fervor in England — 
Demand for release of the envoys and preparations for war — 
Surrender of the envoys — Confused reasoning of Seward and 
Russell about the matter — Hatred of British caused by the 
aflfair — Attitude of the British cabinet toward the Confederate 
envoys — Increased irritation on the part of the South — Addi- 
tional causes of anger in the North — The effect of blockade- 
running — The careers of the cruisers, especially the Florida and 



xvi CONTENTS 

PAGE 

the Alabama — Grievances of the victorious North at the end of 
the war — Hatred of Great Britain in the South — Ill-feeling 
between the United States and Canada — Termination of the 
Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 — The Fenian movement from the 
United States against Canada — Complaints as to the treatment 
of naturalized Irishmen in Great Britain — Strong Irish in- 
fluence in the United States — Cleavage of sympathies accord- 
ing to social classes in England — Result of the war discredits 
the foes of democracy — Triumph of the Liberals in the Reform 
Bill of 1867 — Lincoln's death softens hostility to the United 
States in Great Britain — Absorbing nature of domestic prob- 
lems after the war — Alabama claims formally presented by the 
United States — Basis and content of the claims as presented 
by Charles Francis Adams — The reply of Earl Russell — Lord 
Russell peremptorily rejects arbitration as well as compensa- 
tion — Sentiment in Great Britain against Russell's attitude — 
Renewal of negotiations by Lord Stanley — The Johnson-Clar- 
endon Convention of January, 1869 — Great concessions by the 
British Government — Rejection of the Treaty by the American 
Senate — Charles Sumner's demand for reparation for national 
wrongs — His demand for compensation for national losses — 
Anti-British feeling greatly stimulated by Sumner's speech — 
Resentment caused by it in Great Britain — Connection of 
Sumner's views with those of Cobden and Bright — Sumner aims 
to acquire British North America — Secretary Fish begins ne- 
gotiations with the Gladstone cabinet — Influences promoting 
success — ^The Treaty of Washington of May, 187 1 — The agree- 
ment as to arbitration of the Alabama claims — Great conces- 
sions by the British Government as to the "three rules" — 
American concession on the recognition of Confederate bellig- 
erency — The Geneva Tribunal and its work — Final exclusion 
of the national claims — The award of the Tribunal — Amity 
with America associated with the liberalizing projects of Glad- 
stone — Arbitration of the San Juan water boundary — Arbi- 
tration of Civil War claims other than Alabama claims — Arbi- 
tration as to the inshore fisheries — Award of the Halifax 
Commission — Relation of the fisheries arbitration to political 
movements in Canada. 



CHAPTER VI 

The Growth of Canada and Its Problems . 265 

Participation of the Canadians Rose and Macdonald in ne- 
gotiating the Treaty of Washington — Influences making for 
union of the British-American provinces — Effect of the Civil 
War across the border — Party deadlock in Canada — Movement 



CONTENTS xvii 



for union In the Maritime Provinces — General conference of 
delegates at Quebec, 1864 — Dominion of Canada established, 
1867 — Influence of the United States on the constitution — 
Extension of the Dominion to the Pacific and the Arctic Oceans 
— The problem of national unity in the Dominion — Separation 
of Ontario from Quebec — Projects for east-and-west railways 
— Protectionism adopted under lead of Macdonald, 1878 — 
United States committed to protectionism — Friction-making 
influence of these tariff policies — Operation of the agreement of 
1873 as to the inshore fisheries — Termination of the agreement 
by the United States, 1885 — Seizure of American fishing-vessels 
by the Canadian coast-guards, 1886 — Retaliation enacted by 
Congress — Adjustment by temporary modus vIvendi — Treaty 
for permanent settlement fails in American Senate — Anti- 
British feeling caused by the situation — Increased by defeat of 
Irish home rule and accession of Salisbury — And by incidents 
in the conflict over Cleveland's tariff policy — Dismissal of Sack- 
vllle-West, the British minister — Forebodings of trouble when 
Blaine became secretary of state — Previous trouble over seal- 
hunting In Behring Sea — British vessels seized in Behring Sea 
beyond three-mile limit — American court decides Behring Sea 
to be mare clausum — Secretary Bayard seeks joint prohibition 
of pelagic sealing — Agreement fails through intervention of 
Canada — Renewed seizures of Canadian vessels in 1889 — 
Warm correspondence between Blaine and Salisbury — Modus 
vivendi and treaty of arbitration — Decision of the tribunal 
against the United States — Influence of the episode on national 
susceptibilities — Sense of growth and power in the United 
States — Creation of a modern fleet — Foothold secured in Samoa 
— British movement for imperial federation a challenge to the 
United States — Canadian development of militia and railways 
causes uneasiness — Agitation In Canada for commercial union 
with the United States — Goldwin Smith holds annexation Inevi- 
table — Sir John Macdonald wins election of 1891 on protection 
and loyalty to the British connection — American tariff policy, 
after fluctuation, settles on high protection — General effect of 
tariff controversies on American opinion. 



CHAPTER VII 
Venezuela — and After 300 

Salisbury's Liberal-Unionist ministry of 1895 and its problems 
— The difference with Venezuela as to the boundary of Guiana — 
Early aspects of the controversy — Tender of good offices by 
United States declined by Salisbury — Venezuela presses for 



xviii CONTENTS 



arbitration of full claims; Great Britain declares Schomburgk 
line her irreducible minimum — Cleveland's foreign policy and 
American public sentiment — Secretary Olney's despatch of 
July, 1895 — Extreme positions as to the Monroe Doctrine — 
Salisbury's replies of November 26 — Irreconcilable views of the 
two governments — Cleveland's message of December 17, sug- 
gesting war — Excitement and approval in America — Calming 
effect of longer reflection — British incredulity and amazement — 
Strong movement of unofficial opinion against rupture with 
America — Jameson's raid diverts attention to Africa and 
Germany — British Government agrees to negotiate with United 
States as to the disputed line — Arbitration with Venezuela 
arranged and carried out — General effect of the incident on 
American prestige — Effect on the movement for arbitration — 
Unratified Olney-Pauncefote Treaty of 1897 — Influences con- 
tributing to its failure — The war of 1898 with Spain popular 
in the United States — British sympathy demonstratively with 
the Americans — Anti-British feeling dies out in America — 
Reciprocal sympathy in connection with the wars in the Trans- 
vaal and the Philippines — Cordiality leads to efforts to settle 
outstanding controversies especially with Canada — The un- 
successful Herschell Commission of 1898-9 — Failure due to 
dispute as to the boundary of Alaska — The opposing claims and 
their relation to the Klondike gold mines — Diplomatic agree- 
ments between Great Britain and America effected by Secre- 
tary Hay and his successors and associates — The modus vivendi 
as to the Alaskan boundary — American dislike of the Clayton- 
Bulwer Treaty — Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 1901 supersedes 
Clayton-Bulwer — Alaskan boundary fixed by arbitration, 1903 
— End of boundary disputes confirmed by Root-Bryce con- 
vention, 1908 — Other treaties of 1908 — Renewal of friction 
over inshore fisheries — Arbitration, as recommended by Hague 
Conference, agreed to by English-speaking nations, 1908 — 
Northeastern fisheries sent to arbitration — Decision of the 
tribunal, 1910 — Pelagic sealing in Behring Sea forbidden by 
treaty, 191 1 — Proposal for reciprocity rejected by Canadians 
in elections — Spirit and reasoning of the Canadians not repug- 
nant to Americans — Arbitration treaty of 191 1 — Transforma- 
tion of British and American systems at end of century of 
peace — American imperialism approved by British — British 
federative empire approved by Americans — American activity 
in world politics under Roosevelt — Recasting of speculative 
equilibrium as a consequence — British opinion approves Amer- 
ican development — Movement for imperial federation of Brit- 
ish dominions — The Colonial Conference of 1887 — Develop- 
ment into the Imperial Conference — Results of its consolidating 
activity — Democratic reaction of the colonies on the mother- 
land — Influence on the Irish Home Rule problem — Promotes 



CONTENTS xix 



harmony with the American Republic — Changes of the cen- 
tury of peace in the English-speaking world — Is Great Britain 
still the nerve centre? — Populations of United Kingdom and 
colonies, 1814 and 1914 — American Republic the home of most 
of the English-speaking people — Contrast with British Empire 
geographically — Resemblances social, economic, and political — 
Cordial relations probable in the future. 



CHAPTER VIII 
Conclusion 357 

The fallacy of too sweeping generalization in international 
affairs — Illustrated in the relations of Great Britain and the 
United States — The four periods of the century of peace — 
What the Treaty of Ghent did not do — Progress and failure in 
the diplomacy of the first period — Many causes of friction in 
the second period — Influences making for amity and their 
triumph — General disturbance of good feeling through the 
American Civil War — Pacifying processes after the war — 
Initial controversies of the fourth period — Cause and meaning 
of the explosion over the Venezuelan boundary — Effects of the 
Spanish-American War — Far-reaching progress in cordiality — 
The two great political organisms of the English-speaking 
world — Persistent consciousness of a special ground for peace 
between them. 

Index 373 



INTRODUCTION 

That the centenary of the treaty which has 
secured to Great Britain and the United States 
one hundred years of unbroken peace should 
deserve a celebration might seem strange to 
some philosopher in his study, whose medita- 
tions on the folly and cruelty of war would have 
led him to suppose that peace was natural 
between two great nations kindred in blood, 
both highly intelligent and highly civilized. 
Very different are the feelings of the historian, 
who remembers how often wars have arisen from 
slight causes, or of the practical statesman, 
who knows the kind of motives by which rulers 
who determine the issues of peace or war have 
been and still are governed. Jealousies, rival- 
ries, antagonisms have still so much power over 
peoples, rulers are still so far from trying to 
apply as between states that moral law which 
the better sort of individual men recognize in 
private social and in business intercourse, and 
which public opinion imposes even upon the 
worse sort, that the maintenance of peace be- 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

tween neighbor states through three genera- 
tions of men is a novel and admirable thing, fit 
to inspire joy and deserve commemoration. 

The peoples of these two states were no doubt 
of kindred blood. But the quarrels of kins- 
folk are proverbially bitter, and between these 
there were plenty of causes for quarrel. The 
separation, begun in 1776, sealed by treaty in 
1783, had been made by war, a long war, which 
left angry feelings. The behavior of some of 
the British forces, and especially of the Hessian 
mercenaries, had exasperated colonial senti- 
ment, while the harshness with which the rev- 
olutionary party among the Americans had 
treated those of their fellow citizens who ad- 
hered to the British Crown had sown the seeds 
of more enduring anger, especially among those 
United Empire Loyalists who when expelled 
from the United States took refuge in Canada. 
For many years afterward the offensively super- 
cilious attitude of the English and the self-assert- 
ive arrogance of the Americans made the aver- 
age man in each people distasteful to the other, 
and it was only the wisest and largest minds that 
preached good understanding and good feeling. 
These aversions did not die down till the Civil 
War of 1 861-5, with its display of courage and 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

high spirit on both sides, had brought Europeans 
to respect the American people, and had given 
that people itself new martial deeds to be proud 
of, deeds of a valor which had not been directed 
against the old country. 

Besides these unpleasant memories there were 
also controversies over important material in- 
terests that emerged from time to time. The 
northeastern frontier of the United States where 
the State of Maine borders on New Brunswick 
and Lower Canada had been left uncertain by 
the treaty of 1783, and also by that of 1814, and 
as the country began to be settled the disputes 
over it became threatening. After this question 
had been disposed of by the Webster-Ashburton 
treaty of 1842 another boundary quarrel arose 
for the possession of the region then called 
Oregon. Each nation had a legal case, and for 
many months neither seemed likely to give way. 
Even after the treaty of 1846 had fixed the 
forty-ninth parallel of latitude as the frontier 
line all the way to the shores of the Pacific, the 
diplomatists of both countries were harassed by 
a dispute relating to the ownership of the 
island of San Juan in the Straits of Juan de 
Fuca, and after that dispute had been referred 
to the German Emperor, and determined by 



xxiv INTRODUCTION 

him In favor of the United States, a larger Issue 
was raised over the frontier of Alaska and that 
newly colonized extreme northwestern region of 
Canada which we call the Yukon. This was 
disposed of by a joint commission in 1903. 
There still remained one small outstanding con- 
troversy about a tiny island, called Pope's Folly, 
and some fishing-grounds in Passamaquoddy 
Bay (a large inlet from the Bay of Fundy), 
through which the international boundary runs. 
In 191 1 an agreement was drafted to refer it 
to arbitration. When the negotiators, feeling the 
absurdity of employing the elaborate machinery 
of a court to determine so trivial a matter, agreed 
to split the difference, they gave the islet to the 
State of Maine while the fishing-grounds were 
assigned to the Canadian province of New Bruns- 
wick. With this there ended the long series of 
frontier questions that had so often been a 
source of disquiet, and now every yard of the 
nearly four thousand miles of boundary has been 
marked out by scientific surveyors. To have 
escaped or amicably settled all the grounds of 
friction which might occur along this line, far 
longer than any other frontier between civilized 
nations, is itself an event without parallel in 
history. 



INTRODUCTION xxv 

Even after the land boundary had been de- 
termined, the sea and the creatures that make 
the value of the sea remained to disturb the 
repose of the two nations. In the wandering 
waves one can fix no boundaries, and in the 
wandering fish one can assert no property, so 
fishing questions have always been a source of 
trouble. Questions arose regarding the seal 
fisheries of the Pacific. Controversies far more 
intricate and far more protracted produced an 
almost incessant irritation between the fisher- 
men who came from New England to the coasts 
of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and the 
native fishermen who plied their trade there 
under the British flag. Not till 1910 was this 
seemingly endless dispute adjusted by the sen- 
tence of The Hague tribunal which both parties 
accepted without a murmur. 

The two nations were akin in blood and speech, 
but a common speech carries with it one disad- 
vantage. Each nation can read all the ill- 
natured things that are said about it in the other; 
and there are never wanting those who like to 
say ill-natured things, sometimes from a vanity 
which seeks to exalt itself by depressing others, 
sometimes from a wish to compel attention and 
produce an effect — for in literature, and espe- 



xxvi INTRODUCTION 

cially in journalism, blame draws more notice 
than praise — sometimes from pure ill nature, the 
love of mischief for mischiefs sake. Thus, of 
the many offensive words uttered on both sides 
when temper was up, a larger proportion reached 
the eyes and ears of the other than if they had 
spoken different tongues, and what was spite- 
fully said proved more galling. 

There was, moreover, one exception to that 
community of ideas and traditions which was 
fitted to draw Americans and Englishmen to- 
gether. From the third decade of the nine- 
teenth century there had been a considerable 
immigration from Ireland to the United States. 
It increased largely after 1845, but it did not 
begin to be politically significant till the days of 
the Fenian movement, when some violent mem- 
bers of the insurrectionary party escaped to the 
United States and placed there their base of 
operations against the British Government. At 
the same time they sought to organize and to 
rouse the Irishmen settled in America, a large 
and rapidly growing element, against England. 
Not only the volume of the Irish vote but its 
compactness, as well as the prominence of Irish 
leaders in municipal government and in the 
party machine, made the constant attacks upon 



INTRODUCTION xxvll 

England and the constant pressure upon Con- 
gressmen and on successive administrations to 
adopt an anti-British poHcy, a factor of some 
moment. After the remarkable change of Brit- 
ish policy toward Ireland which began with Mr. 
Gladstone's Church Disestablishment Bill of 
1869, and reached its high-water mark in his 
Home Rule Bill of 1886, this anti-English senti- 
ment gradually declined, affecting an always 
diminishing percentage of that part of the 
American population which springs from an Irish 
stock and cherishes an Irish patriotism. It is 
now confined to a comparatively small section, 
and is likely soon to disappear. But from the 
end of the Civil War till about the end of the 
century it was an obstacle to perfectly good 
relations, being one of the many ways which 
Irishmen have found of avenging the wrongs 
their forefathers suffered at the hands of English 
governments. 

Nevertheless, despite these grounds of dis- 
sension and others which need not be here re- 
counted, peace did last unbroken, and, though 
there were several strains, none came quite to the 
breaking-point. The times at which the risk 
of a breach was greatest seem to have been the 



xxviii INTRODUCTION 

dispute about Oregon in 1845, the Trent affair 
in 1861, and the years just after the Civil War 
(1865 to 1871), when the resentment over the 
depredations committed by the Alabama was 
acute. The Venezuela incident at the end of 
1895 was a passing squall, which the English, 
astonished at the vehemence shown over a mat- 
ter which not one Englishman in a hundred had 
ever heard of, could not be induced to take 
seriously. In the two former of these instances 
there was some bellicose sentiment on both 
sides of the Atlantic, in the two latter such a 
sentiment existed on the American side only, 
and few persons in England could imagine war 
as likely to result. 

To what causes, then, do we owe it that all 
the sources of trouble which from time to time 
arose, some of which were for the moment 
formidable, have so passed away that for more 
than a generation there has been a growing 
sense of concord and good will .? 

The cause which naturally occurs to most 
minds is blood kinship and a common speech. 
It is, however, easy to overrate the value of such 
a tie. It has not prevented fierce wars between 
communities of the same nationality. Athe- 
nians and Thebans bore to one another an un- 



INTRODUCTION xxlx 

dying hate. So did Pisans and Florentines. 
Bitter were the wars between German prin- 
cipaHties in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
turies. Tocqueville said in 1830 that he could 
conceive of no hatred more poisonous than that 
which the Americans then felt for England.^ 
Kinship alone would not have been enough. 
Kinship, however, was reinforced by a sense of 
the common possession of a great literature and 
great traditions. The New Englanders, bitter 
as they often were toward England, could not 
forget that Milton and Cromwell were English- 
men. Many a Virginian family was proud of its 
Cavalier ancestry. So too, though it was at 
one time the fashion among the English upper 
and literary class to treat the Americans as a 
purely commercial people, and to disparage their 
literature, each nation had a genuine interest 
in the other's performances and a capacity for 
understanding the other which neither possessed 
as toward any other people. Each was secretly 
proud of the other, though neither would avow it. 
The American masses would from 18 14 down to 
1 87 1 have felt less repulsion from the notion of 
armed strife than would the English, but fortu- 

^ One may, however, conjecture that in listening to the sharp words 
of his New England friends he underrated an underlying sentiment 
running the other way. 



XXX INTRODUCTION 

nately there was no standing army in the United 
States, and only a small navy, so that the country 
was free from that pernicious influence of a 
professional military caste which works such 
frightful evil in Europe, being indeed driven to 
desire opportunities for practising the work for 
which the profession exists. In Britain the army 
and navy never wished to fight America. They 
would have felt wars with her to be almost civil 
wars, hella nullos hahitura triumphos. And when 
in recent years America began to have a great 
navy, her officers and sailors, as often as they 
found themselves in foreign ports, always frater- 
nized with those of British vessels, and found 
the latter friends ready made. 

The basis for good will grew wider and 
firmer with the increased intercourse of private 
citizens which followed the introduction of 
steam navigation. Private friendships became 
incomparably more numerous, and the interests 
of commerce were more closely interwoven. 

Neither nation was drawn into war by such 
alliances with any other state as we now see 
to be among the most deadly sources of war. 
Happily for herself, America has had no entan- 
gling alliances; that risk existed only in 1793-5. 
Britain, not always so carefully detached, never 



INTRODUCTION xxxi 

has had, and it may safely be said never will 
have, any that could require her to array herself 
against America. 

But the main factor working for peace has 
been the good sense and self-control inherent 
in the character of the two peoples. Neither 
of them suffers itself to be swept away by pas- 
sion, neither forgets, even when demagogues seek 
to excite it by appeals to national vanity and 
so-called " points of honor," that there are, be- 
hind the susceptibilities of the moment, large 
issues of permanent well-being to be considered. 
In the days when both nations claimed Oregon, 
a territory of great extent and value, imper- 
fectly as that value was then known, was in 
dispute. But in both countries public opinion 
recognized that the other side also had a case, 
and that war would be a greater evil than the 
loss of part of its own rights. The territory 
was accordingly divided and peace was pre- 
served. So on other occasions also the peoples 
came near the brink of a rupture, but showed 
their inborn quality by stopping on the brink. 

The question arises — and it is a question of 
high interest — how much of this self-restraint 
and underlying wisdom is to be attributed to 
the fact that the United States Government ever 



xxxii INTRODUCTION 

since 1814 and the British Government ever 
since 1832 have been popular governments, in 
which the general feeling of the nation has been, 
though more evidently in the United States than 
in Britain, the ultimately decisive factor in 
international relations. One would like to as- 
cribe much weight to this factor, for it would be 
reassuring as to the pacific tendencies of democ- 
racies in general. But the facts are not all one 
way. Let us consider them. It is clear that 
if the government of Britain had been as pop- 
ular in 1776 as it was in 1876 the North Amer- 
ican colonies would not have been alienated as 
they unhappily were, and also clear that in 1862 
the existence of a wide-spread sympathy for the 
Northern States among the British masses im- 
mensely diminished the risk that the British 
Government might yield to the persuasions of 
the French Emperor and might thus, in recog- 
nizing the independence of the Southern Con- 
federacy, find herself in a conflict with the 
North.^ But on every occasion since 18 14 in 

' A well-known writer, General von Bernhardi, observes in his recent 
book, Germany and the Next War (p. 94 of English translation) : " England 
committed the unpardonable blunder, from her point of v'iew, of not 
supporting the Southern States in the American War of Secession." 
What the Prussian general calls an "unpardonable blunder" was the 
scornful refusal of the British nation — a practically unanimous refusal — 
to take advantage of the divisions in a kindred people and set back the 
cause of human freedom. 



INTRODUCTION xxxiii 

which peace seemed to be threatened from the 
American side, popular feeling in the United 
States was, or seemed to be, so far belHcose 
that the statesmen who directed American 
poHcy thought they could make political capi- 
tal out of a menacing attitude. Such was the 
case with Mr. Polk and Mr. Seward, and again 
with Mr. Blaine; and such seemed to be the 
case with Mr. Cleveland in December, 1895, 
though the motives with which he launched his 
message of that year have never been fully 
understood. If nothing similar happened in 
Britain, it must be remembered that the ques- 
tions which arose between the two countries 
were all (except the Trent affair) remote from 
the knowledge and interest of the great bulk of 
Englishmen, so that it was never worth the 
while of any politician, however free from scru- 
ples, to win any popular favor by an anti-Amer- 
ican policy. Had the controversies which arose 
over Canadian issues directly affected Britain, 
or, in other words, had the English been Cana- 
dians, defending their view of their rights to dis- 
puted territory or to absolute control of sea- 
fisheries, the temper of the British people might 
have been more sensitive and their latent pug- 
nacity more easily aroused. 



xxxlv INTRODUCTION 

One remarkable proof of good feeling and of 
a good sense which rises to the level of the 
highest political wisdom has been of late years 
given by the people of the United States. 
There was a time when they desired to com- 
plete their control of the North American 
continent by absorbing Canada. It was a 
natural desire, for there were geographical con- 
siderations which seemed to favor it, and It 
would, if peaceably effected, have Increased 
their strength and wealth. But never since 
1 8 14 have they seriously thought of using force 
against Canada, for they know that just govern- 
ments are based on the consent of the gov- 
erned, while in recent years they have frankly 
renounced the notion of employing any kind 
even of a pacific pressure, and have recognized 
In a large-minded and friendly spirit that Can- 
ada has a patriotic Ideal of her own and wishes 
both to become a great nation and to maintain 
her political connection with the mother-coun- 
try and those other great dominions which re- 
gard the ancient crown of Britain as their 
centre of unity. In this matter at least let us 
stop to honor and admire the spirit of Amer- 
ican democracy. 

He who reads this record which Professor 



INTRODUCTION xxxv 

Dunning has set forth with so much judgment as 
well as with a conspicuous impartiality, will be 
struck by the fact that groundless suspicions 
by either nation of the purposes of the other, 
and the attribution by either to the other of 
motives which did not exist or were of slight 
importance, played no small part in the imbit- 
terment of relations. Such suspicions and mis- 
conceptions between states are always to be 
feared. They have been fruitful sources of 
strife. That they did not, as between Britain 
and America, prove fatal in times of strain may 
be ascribed to the fact that there were always 
in both nations men capable of correcting these 
misapprehensions, and that each knew enough 
of its own defects to be able to make al- 
lowances for the like defects in the other. The 
most serious misapprehension was that which, 
owing largely to the unwisdom of a section of 
the English press, arose during the Civil War, 
when most Americans supposed that a jealous 
spirit made England desire the downfall of the 
Republic. That was never the case, as I can 
venture to assert from my recollection of those 
now distant days. There was a good deal of 
sympathy with the valor and constancy of the 
Confederates. But the fact was, though Amer- 



xxxvi* INTRODUCTION 

icans did not then know it, that the bulk of the 
British people, and most of its intellectual 
leaders, men like John Bright and Goldwin 
Smith, always stood for the cause which they 
held to be that of human rights and of demo- 
cratic progress. During the years from 1861 
to 1865 no meetings open to the general public 
were (so far as I can remember) ever held to 
give support to the Confederate cause, because 
it was known that in such an open meeting no 
resolution adverse to the North could have been 
carried on a vote. In the upper classes there 
were then some people who would have liked 
to see a republic discredited. But the larger 
heart of the British nation as a whole refused 
the most favorable opportunity it ever had of 
injuring its greatest competitor. 

Though Professor Dunning is right in dwell- 
ing upon the fact that the gradual democra- 
tization of Britain tended to the promotion of 
good relations, it is to be noted that in neither 
country was either of the great parties identified 
with either an anti-American or an anti-British 
tendency. Party politics came but little into 
the matter. But men, that is to say, the views 
and characters of individual statesmen, did 
come in, and made an immense difference. 



INTRODUCTION xxxvii 

The portraits of Webster and Ashburton that 
hang on the walls of the State Department 
at Washington commemorate two negotiators 
whose happy co-operation solved a problem the 
solution of which might, in the hands of lesser 
men, have been remitted to the sword. On that 
occasion both the United States and Canada 
were displeased, the press of each declaring that 
its representative had conceded far too much. 
That has almost always been said in both coun- 
tries alike when any compromise was made. 
But the outer world and posterity have ap- 
proved the compromise. Neither American nor 
British interests were always in the keeping of 
men so tactful and prudent as Webster and 
Ashburton. There were moments when the 
stiff and frigid attitude of the British foreign 
secretary exasperated the American negoti- 
ators, or when a demagogic secretary of state 
at Washington tried by a bullying tone to win 
credit as the patriotic champion of national 
claims. But whenever there were bad manners 
in London there was good temper at Washing- 
ton, and when there was a storm on the Poto- 
mac there was calm on the Thames. It was 
the good fortune of the two countries that if at 
any moment rashness or vehemence was found 



xxxviii INTRODUCTION 

on one side, it never happened to be met by the 
Hke quality on the other. 

The moral of the story which Professor Dun- 
ning has told so clearly is that peace can always 
be kept, whatever be the grounds of contro- 
versy, between peoples that wish to keep it. 
Mr. Root, the greatest of Webster's successors in 
the office of secretary of state, has well said that 
there is no issue in diplomacy which cannot be 
settled if the negotiators sincerely try to settle 
it. The questions that arose between these two 
countries were questions in which, especially on 
the American side, the negotiators could not act 
without having the mind and will of the people 
behind them, because the people had some 
knowledge of the questions, a knowledge far 
wider than European nations have of the con- 
troversies that arise between their governments. 
The people could exert their judgment, and 
their judgment, even in moments of excitement, 
realized how frightful would be the calamities of 
a fratricidal war. 

This feeling has grown immensely stronger 
within the last half-century, as any one whose 
recollection extends that far back can testify. 
It is a guarantee of unbroken peace for the 
future. May not that sense of an unbreakable 



INTRODUCTION xxxJx 

peace have effects going beyond the two na- 
tions whom it blesses ? They understand one 
another. The material interests that unite them 
are greater than ever before, the private friend- 
ships more numerous, the reciprocal knowledge 
of one another more complete. Are they not 
naturally fitted to act together whenever their 
efforts can be jointly put forth on behalf of 
international justice and peace, confirming by 
their influence the good which their example 
has already done ? They have given the finest 
example ever seen in history of an undefended 
frontier, along which each people has trusted 
to the good faith of the other that it would 
create no naval armaments; and this very 
absence of armaments has itself helped to pre- 
vent hostile demonstrations. Neither of them 
has ever questioned the sanctity of treaties, 
or denied that states are bound by the moral 
law. 

Be that as it may, it is, to those who are sad- 
dened by the calamities which the year 1914 
has brought upon Europe, a consoling thought 
that the century of peace which has raised the 
English-speaking peoples from forty millions 
to one hundred and sixty millions has created 
among those peoples a sense of kindliness and 



xl INTRODUCTION 

good will which was never seen before, and 
which is the surest pledge of their future pros- 
perity and progress, as well as of the main- 
tenance of a Perpetual Friendship between 
them. 

James Bryce. 

HiNDLEAP, Sussex, 

September 14, 1914. 



THE BRITISH EMPIRE 

AND 

THE UNITED STATES 

CHAPTER I 

READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

In the late afternoon of December 24, 18 14, 
the commissioners who had agreed upon the 
Treaty of Ghent signed their handiwork and 
exchanged conventional expressions of satis- 
faction at the conclusion of their labors. John 
Quincy Adams, as he tells us in his diary, as- 
sured Lord Gambier of his hope that it would 
be the last treaty of peace between Great 
Britain and the United States. Two weeks 
later, at a banquet given by the citizens in 
honor of the commissioners, Mr. Adams, pro- 
posing the culminating toast of the occasion, 
worded it thus: "Ghent, the city of Peace; 
may the gates of the temple of Janus, here 
closed, not be opened again for a century!" 



2 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

It is not likely that a conscientious search of 
his heart, such as Mr. Adams was wont to en- 
gage in at times, would have revealed any very 
large measure of the confidence that his formal 
words had implied. Neither in the course of 
the negotiations nor in their result could the 
most sanguine observer have found assurance 
of even the lesser degree of permanence that 
had been piously suggested. Actual war be- 
tween English-speaking peoples the treaty did 
indeed bring to an end; the causes of the war 
it did not make the subject of even a remote 
allusion. 

By all the canons of judgment that were war- 
ranted by history and by the conditions of the 
times, the peace made at Ghent could be merely 
a truce. Great Britain in 1815 stood on the 
pinnacle of fame as the mightiest political power 
on earth. Her population of 19,000,000 was 
not large, relatively speaking, but it was com- 
pact. Included in it were some 5,000,000 Irish- 
men, who, though perpetually troublesome in 
some respects, could always be depended upon 
to furnish a goodly quota of both brains and 
brawn in war. Her navy had established an 
undisputed control of all the seas. Her army, 
under Wellington, had given the final blow to 



READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 3 

the prestige of the greatest military genius of 
modern times, if not of all times. Her colonial 
possessions, largely increased by the twenty 
years of war just ended, covered vast areas in 
every part of the globe. Commercially, no 
other power approached her in the magnitude 
of her interests. In manufactures she was 
slowly but surely forging to the front on lines 
that were soon to revolutionize industry. Po- 
litically and socially the forces that made up 
this mighty organism were centred in a nar- 
row aristocracy. The landowners of the United 
Kingdom ruled the British Empire. There was 
indeed a monarch; there was a House of Com- 
mons; there were courts and juries and bills of 
rights and all the elements that had for cen- 
turies been the vaunted guarantees of English 
liberty. In the actual working of the complex 
system, however, the decisive influence was 
wielded by the landed aristocracy, and more 
particularly by the peers whose estates consti- 
tuted so significant a fraction of the surface of 
the islands. 

The United States, when it ventured to en- 
gage in war with this huge empire, presented a 
contrast with its adversary that was almost 
ludicrous. A population of 8,000,000, of whom 



4 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

some 1,500,000 were negro slaves, was scattered 
along a thousand miles of the Atlantic seaboard, 
with a few straggling lines of settlement in the 
Mississippi valley. For military power this na- 
tion could boast a dozen half-filled regiments of 
regular troops, distributed in small detachments 
over the whole territory, and a navy so insig- 
nificant in size as to evoke roars of laughter 
when the number of its ships was mentioned 
in the House of Commons. Before the end of 
the war this minute navy had given such an 
account of itself as no longer to be a cause of 
mirth at Westminster, and even the army, after 
bitter humiliation, had won somewhat of dis- 
tinction. Yet in no sense could the United 
States be reckoned as of much significance 
among the powers of the civilized world. Its 
foreign commerce had assumed some impor- 
tance during the long Napoleonic wars, but 
could expect no great development in the com- 
petition with Great Britain after peace had been 
made. In manufacturing, a little impetus had 
been given by the exclusion of British goods 
through embargo and war; but here again the 
restoration of peace would put the Americans 
under the crushing weight of competition from 
England and would end, for the time at least, 



READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 5 

any likelihood that the United States would 
figure among the Important Industrial powers. 

The one aspect In which the American Re- 
public attracted serious attention among en- 
lightened nations was the political and social. 
Here was to be found In practical operation on 
a large scale the democracy that the French 
Revolution had threatened to Impose upon all 
Europe. Liberty and equality of a kind and 
degree portentously suggestive of the Ideals of 
1789 and 1792 prevailed throughout the United 
States and were watched with some anxiety by 
the dominant classes In the Old World. It was 
a cardinal maxim of conservative political phi- 
losophy In Europe that republican government 
could not be adapted to the needs of a great 
territory and population. The career of the 
American Republic was expected therefore to 
be stormy and brief. War with the United 
States In 18 12 had not been desired by the 
British governing aristocracy; it involved an 
annoying diversion of attention and resources 
from the serious business of the hour. Only 
because It might In some measure hasten the 
inevitable failure and downfall of the American 
system was It regarded with any equanimity. 
The attitude of the New England Federalists 



6 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

during hostilities had confirmed this feeHng in 
the class among whom it prevailed, and the 
feeling was manifest in the negotiations by 
which the war was brought to an end. 

It would indeed be a serious error to as- 
sume that the feeling here referred to was very 
general in England. Party divisions, though 
dimmed by the national solidarity that was de- 
veloped by the exigencies of the long war with 
France, still marked the line of cleavage in po- 
litical thinking, and the Whigs, for decades in 
a hopeless opposition, still bore the tradition 
of admiration and pride concerning the branch 
of the English race which Tory policy had sev- 
ered from the parent stem. Conspicuous fea- 
tures of American constitutional practice were 
the goal of Whig aspiration and this fact tended 
to produce tolerance of other features that were 
abhorrent. Thoroughgoing democracy such as 
was manifest in the United States was no more 
attractive to the Whigs than to the Tories. 
The Tories, however, feared it, while the Whigs 
looked indulgently upon it as a pathetic error 
that would in time correct itself. To the Tory 
the American people was a brawling, disrepu- 
table loafer, who had disgraced his family by 
plundering it and had by his character and 



READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 7 

conduct put himself beyond the possIbiUty of 
toleration by any member of respectable soci- 
ety. The Whig, on the other hand, felt toward 
the United States much as the upper-class col- 
lege man feels toward the freshman, the jour- 
neyman toward the apprentice, the old and 
sophisticated in any occupation toward the 
newcomer. The strong points of the new man 
were duly appreciated and admired; there was 
satisfaction that the English-speaking group 
should include a stout, smart, likely young 
fellow, and there was shrewd calculation of 
what he could contribute in a competition or 
fight with a rival group; but there was a feel- 
ing that within his own group he must learn 
his place and keep it, and must submit peace- 
ably to the hazing and fagging that were the 
prerogative of his elders. 

It was the Tory point of view that dominated 
the British approach to the negotiations at 
Ghent. For their temerity in undertaking the 
conquest of Canada the Americans must be 
required to surrender enough territory to make 
a renewal of that enterprise very difficult; and, 
moreover, they must refrain from all discussion 
of the practice of search and impressment, 
which they held to be the cause of the war. 



8 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

The announcement of these terms by the British 
commissioners at Ghent suspended negotiation 
abruptly. Peace on any terms involving ces- 
sion of territory by the United States was 
promptly shown by the attitude of the Amer- 
icans to be impossible; the Britons at the same 
time were unyielding as to search and impress- 
ment. Accordingly, peace pure and simple was 
agreed to. The Treaty of Ghent embodied, 
in addition to the articles necessary to end the 
war, only certain provisions for determining the 
northern boundary of the United States as fixed 
by the treaty of 1783, and an agreement to pro- 
mote the abolition of the slave trade. Matters 
of grave and pressing importance, the right of 
search, the navigation of the Mississippi and 
the Saint Lawrence Rivers, the rights of inshore 
fishing on the Atlantic coast — all were broached, 
but were dropped from consideration in order 
to insure the one great end of peace. 

In the United States peace was greeted with 
universal rejoicing. The chagrin of those in 
authority at the failure of a far-reaching settle- 
ment found no place in popular feeling. In the 
dazzling glamour of McDonough's victory on 
Lake Champlain and Jackson's final achieve- 
ment at New Orleans, the humiliation of De- 



READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 9 

troit and Washington and Chrystler's Farm was 
lost to sight entirely, and the belief hardened 
into century-long tradition that in a second war 
for independence the Americans had won as 
decisive a triumph as that which was crowned 
at Yorktown. 

In Great Britain, meanwhile, the conclusion 
of peace with the United States was scarcely 
noted, and the very fact that there had been a 
war was forgotten. The news that the Treaty 
of Ghent had been ratified reached London 
almost simultaneously with the report that 
Napoleon had returned from Elba. Already 
for months the progress of affairs at the Con- 
gress of Vienna had enlisted the anxious atten- 
tion of all Europe. Lord Castlereagh, the Brit- 
ish foreign secretary, on his way to Vienna 
with a train of twenty coaches, as John Quincy 
Adams casually noted, had stopped at Ghent 
long enough, in August, 18 14, to give the Brit- 
ish negotiators the instructions that made the 
conclusion of the treaty possible. The con- 
flicting interests and cross-purposes that were 
in play at Vienna had made a renewal of wide- 
spread war among the great European powers 
not unlikely; the astonishing reception of Na- 
poleon in France made it practically certain. 



10 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

In the presence of such a prospect it was not 
to be expected that the petty affair of American 
relations should excite any interest. Then fol- 
lowed the Hundred Days, Waterloo, and Saint 
Helena. These furnished engrossing material 
for British reflection, both popular and official, 
and all things American faded from view and 
from memory. 

No such oblivion enveloped the recent events 
in that group of loyal Britons who dwelt in 
the provinces north of the United States. Of 
the half-million inhabitants of these provinces 
some fifty per cent were English-speaking, and 
of this fifty per cent the most influential ele- 
ment consisted of the families who had been 
driven from the United States by the result of 
the Revolution. New Brunswick and Upper 
Canada were peopled almost exclusively by these 
exiles. In them the memories and traditions 
of the civil strife that had caused them such 
hardships nourished undying bitterness toward 
the Americans. Toward the thriving democ- 
racy to the south the attitude of the British 
Canadian was that of the English Tory. When 
war broke out in 1812, with the loudly pro- 
claimed purpose of Henry Clay and other san- 
guine spirits to sweep over Canada and dictate 



READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR ii 

peace at Quebec or Halifax, both French and 
British subjects rallied faithfully to the colors 
of the King, but there was a special ardor in 
the response of the British. Those who recalled 
the proceedings of the triumphant party in New 
York and other States at the end of the Revo- 
lutionary War could not be lured to welcome 
the invaders by any call to escape from oppres- 
sion. It happened that the brunt of the fight- 
ing on land fell upon the scattered communities 
of Upper Canada, where anti-American feeling 
was strongest, and the loss and suffering inev- 
itable in even minor hostilities were greatest 
along the shores of Lakes Erie and Ontario and 
the marvellous river that connects them. This 
region, destined to become the leading province 
of the British dominion in America, was per- 
meated thus with the stories of heroic effort, 
sacrifice, and triumph in resistance to invasion. 
To the original Loyalist hatred of the American 
Republic was thus added the confirming force 
of a patriotic tradition, and no little impulse 
was given to the influence that was working to 
develop a proud and prosperous English-speak- 
ing state on the northern half of the continent. 
That the hope and wish for such a future de- 
velopment were less prevalent in England than 



12 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

among the Loyalists in Canada is manifest in a 
remark of Alexander Baring (later Lord Ash- 
burton) to John Quincy Adams in 1816: "... 
it is in vain for us to think of growing strong 
there [in Canada] in the same proportion as 
America. ... He wished the British govern- 
ment would give us Canada at once. It . . . 
was fit for nothing but to breed quarrels." 
Baring's pessimistic observation was made in 
the course of a conversation on the question 
of disarmament on the Great Lakes, and was 
premonitory of a feeling among British pub- 
licists that was to become wide-spread and no- 
torious by the middle of the century. At the 
time when Baring's private opinion was re- 
vealed and was recorded with grim satisfaction 
by Adams, the feeling that gave rise to it was 
probably shared by very few leaders of Brit- 
ish policy. Yet the events of the war had 
served to give the officials of the Colonial De- 
partment much uneasiness about the exposed 
condition of Upper Canada and had thus led 
to the demand for territorial readjustments that 
should bar the Americans from the shores of 
Lakes Erie, Huron, and Superior. The demand 
was peremptorily rejected, but the purpose 
behind it remained active. When, therefore. 



READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 13 

the peace had been made and the British Gov- 
ernment had sufficiently recovered from its 
Napoleonic distractions to give some attention 
to American affairs, it came to pass, happily 
enough, that the situation on the frontier of 
Upper Canada was the first of the many dis- 
turbing questions at issue that was satisfac- 
torily adjusted by diplomacy. 

The work of the diplomats on the problems 
left unsettled by both the war and the treaty 
of peace was begun in the middle of 18 15, with 
the negotiation of a convention of commerce 
and navigation at London. John Quincy Ad- 
ams, Clay, and Gallatin wrestled again with the 
Britons who had been at Ghent, but made no 
progress toward securing for the United States 
the eagerly sought privileges of trade with the 
British-American colonies. The treaty signified 
practically nothing beyond the formal resump- 
tion of reciprocal commerce as it had existed 
before the war, the East Indies becoming again 
the only transmarine dependencies of Great 
Britain with which American vessels were per- 
mitted to carry on trade. 

The matter of the armaments on the Great 
Lakes was formally entered upon diplomatically 
only at the beginning of 18 16. Under instruc- 



14 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

tions from Washington, John Quincy Adams, 
now minister of the United States at London, 
proposed to Lord Castlereagh that both gov- 
ernments set a limit to their respective naval 
forces on the Lakes. The actual situation there 
had given much concern to American and Brit- 
ish authorities alike. The termination of hos- 
tilities came in the midst of energetic efforts by 
the commanders on both sides of the frontier 
to complete and equip new and larger vessels. 
Especially on Lake Ontario, where the supe- 
riority of the Americans was less clearly estab- 
lished than elsewhere, the rivalry in naval con- 
struction was most energetic and ambitious. 
The primitive processes by which a few acres 
of forest had been turned almost overnight 
into fleets of small but sufficient war-ships were 
now being developed and extended to more 
pretentious designs. At Kingston, on the Ca- 
nadian side. Sir James Yeo was pressing to- 
ward completion one ship-of-the-line that should 
mount no guns and two that should mount 
74, and across the lake at Sacketts Harbor two 
rival 74's were on the stocks. Many lesser 
craft were in various stages of construction. 
The cessation of hostilities naturally did not 
end the strenuous rivalry. The same reason- 



READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 15 

ing that was destined a century later to fill the 
oceans and the scrap-heaps of all the world 
with gigantic masses of steel, operated to keep 
at full tension the workers on the puny wooden 
structures that embodied the hope of triumphant 
sea-power in the earlier day. Only when the 
actual strain on the finances of the govern- 
ments overcame the care for a contingent future 
of naval glory, was a halt called in the extrava- 
gant proceedings on the Lakes. 

The proposition of Adams for disarmament 
met with no satisfactory response at first from 
Lord Castlereagh. His Lordship freely ad- 
mitted the ruinous consequences that were 
threatened by the competition in fleet-building, 
but urged that, because Great Britain was at 
a great disadvantage as compared with the 
United States in respect to facilities for defen- 
sive equipment in that remote region, any re- 
striction of force should apply to the Americans 
only. The truth was that the British cabinet 
were seriously divided on the policy to be pur- 
sued in this matter. A party headed by Lord 
Bathurst, the colonial secretary, insisted that 
an overwhelming naval force should be created 
on the Lakes, so as to render forever out of the 
question any American aggression upon Upper 



i6 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

Canada. Demands for this policy were strongly- 
urged in both Parliament and the press during 
the winter and spring of 1816, and gave Adams 
much anxiety. Ultimately, however, the bel- 
ligerent faction was overcome by the pacifists 
of the government, and Adams, much to his 
surprise, was informed by Castlereagh in April 
that the proposal for disarmament would be 
taken up for discussion. 

The detailed discussion of the business was 
transferred to Washington, where it was handled 
by Monroe, the secretary of state, and Bagot, 
the British minister. Final action was not 
reached without considerable delay. On both 
sides of the water there prevailed in military 
and naval circles, and was reflected in the press, 
the usual post-bellum irritation and bluster, 
making the diplomats cautious. Adams re- 
ported his fear that the sudden change in 
Castlereagh's attitude concealed some treach- 
ery, and Bagot was suspicious of an ulterior 
motive behind Monroe's earnestness in seeking 
a settlement. All the clouds were dissipated, 
however, and at the end of April, 18 17, a 
formal agreement was eff^ected by an exchange 
of notes at Washington. By this date Monroe 
had become President of the United States, and 



READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 17 

the State Department was under the charge of 
Richard Rush, pending the return from abroad 
of the new secretary, John Quincy Adams. 
The notes were signed, therefore, by Rush and 
Bagot respectively, and the arrangement em- 
bodied in them became known as the Rush- 
Bagot Agreement. By its terms each govern- 
ment bound itself to limit its naval force on 
the frontier to four vessels, each not exceeding 
one hundred tons burthen and armed with one 
18-pound cannon, one vessel to be stationed 
on Lake Ontario, two on the Upper Lakes, and 
one on Lake Champlain. All other war-ships 
on these lakes were to be forthwith dismantled, 
and no others were to be there built or armed. 

In conformity with this arrangement the 
British authorities disposed of their three ships- 
of-the-line, six medium-sized vessels, and many 
smaller craft, while the Americans dismantled, 
sold, or scuttled and sank a number consider- 
ably larger. So long as the good faith of the 
two governments endured, it was thus insured 
that the Great Lakes should be free from the 
martial ardor that is inevitably inspired by the 
parade of rival forces. The future was to show 
that even more important than this direct in- 
fluence was the indirect effect of the adjustment 



l8 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

in setting the standard of peaceful methods for 
the determination of the vexatious problems 
that arose along the whole long boundary be- 
tween the United States and British America. 

The comprehensive consideration of the ques- 
tions at issue between the United States and 
Great Britain in connection with the late war 
was taken up in 1817 at London. Two years 
of general peace had by this time cleared up 
many cloudy matters of domestic and foreign 
politics and the British cabinet could devote 
some leisurely attention to the issues which 
the Americans were so insistent on bringing 
forward for settlement. It could not be said 
that the slow progress toward a settlement was 
due to any ill feeling on the part of the British 
Government toward the United States. So far 
as Castlereagh's conduct at the Foreign Office 
was concerned, not even John Quincy Adams, 
temperamentally indisposed to approval of an 
adversary, could find much to criticise, while 
Richard Rush, who in 1817 succeeded Adams 
as minister at London, positively and warmly 
proclaimed the conciliatory disposition of the 
secretary. Charles Bagot was sent to Wash- 
ington with imperative instructions to promote 
cordial relations with the American Govern- 



READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 19 

ment, and his success in accomplishing this was 
understood to be the condition of his future 
advancement in his diplomatic career. He did 
not anticipate much pleasure from his task. 
He was an intimate of George Canning, whose 
antipathy to Castlereagh and all his works made 
much scandal in the circles of the ruling aris- 
tocracy. "Your plan of treatment," wrote 
Canning to Bagot just after his appointment 
in 181 5, "may or may not succeed with the 
Yankees, but it is obviously, for your sake, 
the proper one. I am afraid, indeed, that the 
question is not so much how you will treat them 
as how they will treat you, and that the hard- 
est lesson which a British Minister has to learn 
in America is not what to do, but what to bear. 
But even this may come round. And Waterloo 
is a great help to you, perhaps a necessary help 
after the (to say the least) balanced successes 
and misfortunes of the American war." 

Despite all the obstacles, however, Bagot suc- 
ceeded in his undertaking. Though he was 
fully impressed with the fact that ill feeling 
toward Great Britain was a controlling influence 
in the predominant party in the country, he was 
tactful and far-sighted enough to establish at 
Washington the same official cordiality that 



20 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

Rush reported at London. Under such favor- 
able conditions the negotiations that were in- 
tended to define the results of the war pro- 
ceeded to a conclusion in the treaty that was 
signed at London October 20, 18 18. 

This convention fell far short of what the 
Americans had hoped for. Its omissions were 
almost as significant as those of the Treaty of 
Ghent. In particular, there was no reference 
to the right of search and impressment. This 
subject had naturally been put first in impor- 
tance of the long list on which Rush was in- 
structed to seek an agreement. His efforts 
revealed at the very outset, so far as the funda- 
mental principle at issue was concerned, the 
same hopeless impasse that had existed for 
twenty years. Great Britain stood absolutely 
immovable on her right to search foreign mer- 
chantmen on the high seas for British seamen; 
the United States declared categorically that 
she would never admit the right of any foreigner 
to muster the crew of an American vessel on 
their own ship. In view of this unpromising 
antagonism on fundamental principle, the ne- 
gotiations made a degree of progress that was 
highly significant of the conciliatory spirit on 
both sides. Castlereagh freely conceded that 



READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 21 

the practice of visitation and search by the 
British commanders had been attended with 
serious abuses, and he was ready to do every- 
thing possible to prevent their recurrence. 
Rush ultimately agreed that the best way to 
attain this end was to keep British seamen out 
of American ships. Accordingly, a draft treaty 
was actually formulated in which Great Britain 
abandoned the visitation of American ships ex- 
cept for purposes recognized by both govern- 
ments as justifiable by international law, while 
the United States undertook to exclude from 
service in its merchant marine all natural-born 
subjects of Great Britain, even those who 
should in the future become American citizens 
under the naturalization laws. 

This project eventually was dropped, on ac- 
count of disagreements on subsidiary points 
concerning ratification and administration. It 
probably involved rather too large concessions 
for the time and circumstances on both sides. 
America had already become as tenacious of 
her claim concerning the rights of her natural- 
ized citizens as Britain was concerning the 
right of her navy to recruit its forces wherever 
it could find British seamen. The points on 
which the treaty came to grief were so rela- 



22 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

tively insignificant as strongly to suggest that 
they were merely a cover for retreat from a 
too advanced position on the main questions. 
Whatever was the truth in this matter, the 
failure of the project left active a serious men- 
ace to the peace of the two nations. The peril 
was destined to endure until the progress of 
ideas had undermined the British conviction 
that the brutal practice of impressment was the 
only adequate means by which to insure naval 
pre-eminence, and until the growth and prestige 
of the United States had made respect for her 
claims as to the rights of her citizens a neces- 
sity in practice if not in theory. 

Of the subjects on which agreement was 
actually embodied in the convention of 1818, 
the majority involved relations between the 
United States and the British possessions to 
the north of it. Most important was the ad- 
justment of the differences as to the fisheries 
on the Atlantic coast. By the treaty of peace 
in 1783 Great Britain recognized the right of 
the people of the United States to take fish 
on the banks of Newfoundland, in the Gulf of 
Saint Lawrence, and at sea in general, and 
further accorded the "liberty" of fishing on 
practically all the coasts, bays, and creeks of 



READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 23 

British America, with the additional ^'Hberty" 
of drying and curing fish on certain unsettled 
parts of the shore. By these provisions a prom- 
inent American industry was made very pros- 
perous and profitable. The excessive generos- 
ity of the British negotiators was severely 
criticised by their compatriots on both sides of 
the Atlantic. At Ghent, in 18 14, there was an 
opportunity to correct the error of the earlier 
treaty. Accordingly, the British commission- 
ers took the position that, under a familiar 
principle of international law, the fisheries 
article of 1783, like all the rest of that conven- 
tion, had been abrogated by war between the 
signatory governments. The Americans were 
fully equipped with reasons why this principle 
did not apply to the fisheries article. The 
debate reached no conclusion, however, on ac- 
count of the agreement to treat of peace only. 

After hostilities ceased friction naturally arose 
in the fishing regions. The Americans resumed 
their accustomed pursuit of the herring and cod 
in the accustomed places; the British author- 
ities in the Maritime Provinces manifested a 
purpose to protect their coast from the intru- 
sion of the Americans. A zealous naval com- 
mander even warned an American fisherman 



24 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

who was plying his vocation out of sight of land 
not to venture to do so within sixty miles of 
the shore. Protests on these incidents evoked 
from the British Foreign Office at last the 
formal declaration that it claimed no right to 
interfere with fishing on the high sea, but that 
it would treat as extinct the liberty once recog- 
nized to Americans to take and cure fish on any 
British coasts or bays. It was obviously high 
time for serious effort to remove so disagree- 
able a situation as was thus created. 

In the negotiations on the subject the case 
of the Americans was almost hopeless. The 
inshore privileges long enjoyed were vital to 
the prosperity of a great industry that cen- 
tred in Massachusetts. To maintain these 
privileges, however, it was necessary to sus- 
tain two contentions that were desperately 
weak, namely, that the ''liberty" accorded by 
the treaty of 1783 was in reality a right under 
the law of nature and of nations, and that this 
liberty or right had not been abrogated by the 
war. Gallatin and Rush, the American pleni- 
potentiaries, as well as Secretary Adams, who 
directed them, were adepts in the diplomatist's 
art of extracting from the hazy realms of nature 
and history the particular principle or prece- 



READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 25 

dent that happened to be useful to their cause; 
but their skill availed little against the stiff 
British dogma that territorial jurisdiction was 
absolute as against the claims of any foreign 
power, especially one that had recently failed 
of success in war. 

The result, however, in the actual treaty pro- 
visions was more favorable to the American 
interests than had prima facie seemed possible. 
Great Britain again made substantial conces- 
sions. The liberty of inshore fishing was as- 
sured forever to the inhabitants of the United 
States on certain limited stretches of British 
coast, namely, in Newfoundland, the whole 
western shore and an important piece of the 
southern; in Labrador, from a designated point 
in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence eastward and 
northward indefinitely; and all the shores of 
the Magdalen Islands, In Labrador and the 
south of Newfoundland drying and curing fish 
on shore was also permitted. Besides the solid 
gain contained in these provisions, the American 
commissioners flattered themselves that they 
had saved their face in the very terms in which 
the fishing privileges were abandoned as to all 
the other British coasts. "And the United 
States hereby renounce forever any liberty 



II 



26 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

heretofore enjoyed or claimed" as to fishing 
within three miles of coasts, bays, creeks, or 
harbors outside of the foregoing hmits. This 
wording was held to imply that the inshore 
privileges recognized in the treaty were not 
newly granted or ever granted by Great Britain, 
but were part of a natural heritage possessed 
by the United States, of which another and 
larger part was voluntarily renounced. 

It is interesting to notice that, despite the 
meticulous care which the Americans devoted 
to the phrasing of the article, with a view to its 
more or less metaphysical implications, there re- 
mained in it the germ of a long and vexatious 
dispute on a most practical point of interpre- 
tation. Within twenty years of the signing of 
the treaty the British Government took the 
position that the "bays" from which the Amer- 
icans were excluded embraced great expanses 
of deep sea where fishermen could ply their 
vocation on the largest scale without coming 
within three miles of the shore. If any one 
concerned in the negotiation of the treaty in 
1818 suspected the possibility of such a view, 
he left no record of his insight. 

In addition to the settlement as to the fish- 
eries, this treaty dealt with the delimitation of 



READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 27 

territory from the Lake of the Woods to the 
Pacific Ocean. No serious controversy devel- 
oped over this matter, not because the views 
of the two parties were entirely harmonious, 
but because the occupation of the vast wilder- 
ness concerned was as yet on too Hmited a scale 
to raise any immediate issue. From the Lake 
of the Woods to the summit of the Rocky Moun- 
tains it was easily agreed that the forty-ninth 
degree of latitude should be the boundary. As 
no one knew the position of the lake with refer- 
ence to the parallel, but all felt sure that a 
meridian from the lake would cross the parallel 
somewhere, it was provided that from the 
northwestern point of the lake a north and 
south line should be run, if necessary, to inter- 
sect the parallel, and this line, with the paral- 
lel, should mark the boundary. West of the 
Rocky Mountains, however, the Oregon coun- 
try, with its great rivers and its long and much 
indented Pacific coast, presented problems and 
possibilities of such obvious magnitude that 
neither party was especially eager to press for 
a definitive adjustment till fuller knowledge 
was forthcoming. Both British and American 
merchants had established fur-trading stations 
on the coast, and from the opposite direction 



28 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

the Oregon country had been penetrated by 
the hardy and enterprising agents of great com- 
mercial interests centring respectively at Saint 
Louis and Montreal. All that was provided 
by the treaty was that the whole region, so far 
as claimed by either Great Britain or the United 
States, should for ten years be free and open to 
the vessels, citizens, and subjects of the two 
powers. 

The most satisfactory feature of the conven- 
tion of 1818, so far as concerned delimitation of 
territory, was the provision by which a thou- 
sand miles of the boundary was made dependent 
upon the fairly certain mechanical processes 
of the surveyor. An astronomical line will in- 
deed vary with the personality of the men 
and the precision of the instruments employed 
in determining it, but it is certainty itself as 
compared with most other customary means 
of demarcation. A priori one might suppose 
that geographical features, such as rivers and 
mountains, fixed by nature beyond the ordinary 
power of man to change, would furnish the 
most satisfactory boundaries. Experience has 
proved, however, that this is very far from the 
truth. Not until the present century, when 
almost every mile of the thousands in North 



READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 29 

America where British and American posses- 
sions are contiguous has been marked by mon- 
uments erected by human hands, have contro- 
versies over territorial hmits been set finally 
at rest. 

At the time when the convention of 1818, by 
the provision for the joint occupation of Oregon, 
postponed a dangerous dispute concerning the 
western side of the continent, a serious but 
unsuccessful effort was in progress to adjust 
a threatening difference at the far eastern end 
of the line. The treaty of peace in 1783 had 
been singularly unsuccessful in the attempt to 
make clear the northern boundary of the United 
States. Difficulties in running the line made 
their appearance all the way from the Atlantic 
Ocean to the Lake of the Woods. The start- 
ing-point was set forth with much apparent 
particularity in the treaty: "From the north- 
west angle of Nova Scotia, m., that angle 
which is formed by a line drawn due north from 
the source of Saint Croix River to the High- 
lands; along the Highlands which divide those 
rivers which empty themselves into the river 
Saint Lawrence, from those which fall into the 
Atlantic Ocean, to the northwesternmost head 
of Connecticut River . . ." But no one knew 



30 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

or ever discovered the whereabouts of the 
"northwest angle of Nova Scotia"; the "High- 
lands" referred to could not be identified; the 
rivers "which fall into the Atlantic Ocean" 
might or might not include those that reached 
their destination by way of the great gulfs and 
bays that abounded in the neighborhood, and 
much depended on which alternative was se- 
lected; the "northwesternmost head of the 
Connecticut River" was doubtful and undeter- 
mined. Most important of all at the outset, 
moreover, was the fact that the two govern- 
ments disagreed as to what stream was meant 
by the Saint Croix River. As the middle of 
this river, from mouth to source, completed, in 
the treaty, the long circuit of the boundary as 
there described, and separated Maine from New 
Brunswick, it early became imperative to settle 
on the identity of the Saint Croix. Only after 
fifteen years of controversy was an agreement 
reached. In 1798 a joint commission provided 
for in Jay's Treaty found that the Schoodic 
River was what the treaty meant by the Saint 
Croix, and determined by survey its mouth and 
its source. 

This was the limit of the progress made prior 
to the War of 18 12. In the Treaty of Ghent 



READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 31 

the boundary question was taken up in earnest, 
and three distinct commissions were provided 
for, with recourse to arbiters in case of disagree- 
ment between the commissioners. 

The whole undetermined Hne from the At- 
lantic to the Lake of the Woods was parcelled 
out to these bodies for final survey and indica- 
tion. Only one of the commissions was suc- 
cessful in its task: the course of the line among 
the islands in Passamaquoddy Bay and the 
Bay of Fundy was agreed upon without much 
trouble. At the other end of the boundary, be- 
tween Lake Huron and the Lake of the Woods, 
some points were presented on which the com- 
missioners could not reach an agreement, but no 
pressing necessity for a settlement arose. The 
task of the third commission, namely, to run 
the line from the head of the Saint Croix to the 
point where the Saint Lawrence is intersected 
by the forty-fifth parallel of north latitude, 
proved to be wholly beyond its power. The 
commissioners toiled for five years, from 18 16 
to 1 82 1, only to reach a hopeless disagreement. 
As the "northwest angle of Nova Scotia" the 
opinions of the two commissioners designated 
respectively points that were 105 miles apart; 
their views as to the "highlands," etc., left a 



32 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

region of over ten thousand square miles in dis- 
pute on the frontier of Maine and New Bruns- 
wick; and further the discovery was made, much 
to the discomfort of the Americans, that what 
had for fifty years passed for the forty-fifth 
parallel and served as the boundary between 
New York and Vermont on the one side and 
Canada on the other, was in fact so far from the 
true parallel as to leave on British soil a costly 
fortress under construction by the United States 
at Rouse's Point. 

The progress of settlement and development 
made this situation a cause of great concern to 
the two governments. Arbitration was ar- 
ranged in 1827 and the King of the Netherlands 
was chosen as umpire. His opinion, pronounced 
in 183 1, frankly declared the impossibility of 
deciding which, if either, of the conflicting 
claims conformed to the terms of the treaty of 
1783, and proposed a line that divided the 
region in dispute. This proposal was not ac- 
cepted by either government, and the matter 
remained to be the source of ever-increasing 
friction, as we shall see, until 1842. 

If the character of their formal diplomatic 
intercourse were a conclusive criterion of the 
general feeling of two nations toward each other. 



READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 33 

cordial respect and friendship would be said to 
have prevailed between Great Britain and the 
United States in the years immediately follow- 
ing the end of the war. Even when, as in re- 
gard to the right of search, differences of view 
were obstinate and irreconcilable, the debate 
had involved no display of bitterness. All the 
negotiations had been correct and amicable 
according to the most exacting requirements 
of the diplomatist's art. The technique of this 
art, however, consists largely in devices through 
which good manners shall cover feelings of quite 
another sort. A model plenipotentiary may be 
an indifferent index of the national spirit which 
he represents. Like the second in an affair of 
honor, he must guide his principal along the 
lines of the established proprieties, however 
deeply he may sympathize with the principal's 
impulse to slay the adversary out of hand. In 
the period with which we are dealing there is 
no room for doubt that the statesmen chiefly 
concerned with Anglo-American relations re- 
garded one another with sincere respect, and 
were earnest in their desire for harmony between 
the peoples. They were all aware, at the same 
time, of deep feelings and powerful interests 
on both sides of the Atlantic that worked inces- 



34 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

santly in the opposite direction. In i8i8, in 
the midst of the negotiations for the convention 
of that year, a disconcerting illustration of this 
fact was brought before the public by the pro- 
ceedings of the American general Andrew Jack- 
son on the Spanish soil of Florida. 

In the United States the most particular 
abode of hostility to all things British was the 
valley of the Mississippi — the frontier region 
where population was sparse but now rapidly 
growing. Of the causes which nourished this 
hostility, the most active was probably the tra- 
ditional relations between the British and the 
Indians in both the Northwest and the South- 
west. Practically every village and settlement 
between the mountains and the Mississippi con- 
tained inhabitants who had suffered personally 
from the ghastly incidents of savage warfare. 
That the Indians who butchered and burned 
and scalped throughout the West had been sys- 
tematically inspired and sustained in their acts 
and methods by British authorities, was an in- 
grained conviction among the American people. 
The open alliance of the army in Canada with 
Tecumseh during the late war confirmed this 
conviction for generations. Long after the war, 
Indian bands from the remoter regions of the 



READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 35 

Northwest made annual pilgrimages to Maiden, 
the Canadian garrison town across the river from 
Detroit, and there received the long-custom- 
ary gifts from the commander. The American 
authorities in Michigan viewed this proceeding 
with much anxiety and protested to Washington 
against its continuance. It was firmly believed 
by many in the United States, including so 
hard-headed a personage as John Quincy Ad- 
ams, that the continued distribution of gifts to 
the Indians was deliberately calculated to insure 
the support of the savages in future hostilities. 
In the southern part of the United States the 
Creek Indians, during the war with Great 
Britain, had, more or less under the inspiration 
of Tecumseh, opened war of the usual kind on 
the whites. The ruthless energy of Andrew 
Jackson soon crushed the savages, many of 
whom sought safety across the boundary in 
Florida, where Spanish authority held feeble 
sway. So feeble was this sway that a British 
force had ventured to occupy Pensacola, the 
capital of the province, as a base of operations 
against the Americans. Jackson pursued his 
Indian foes into Florida, and did not aban- 
don Spanish territory till he had captured Pen- 
sacola and driven the British force out of the 



36 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

neighborhood. The utter inabihty of Spain to 
maintain a semblance of effective sovereignty 
in Florida was made perfectly clear by these 
events. After the peace of Ghent her weakness 
continued to be manifested in the threatening 
activities of hostile Indians, runaway slaves, 
and many varieties of outlaws along the Amer- 
ican frontier. The Spanish governor, in reply 
to complaints, acknowledged that he could not 
keep these people in order. In 1817 Seminole 
Indians attacked United States troops on the 
border and Jackson, with the prestige of suc- 
cess in the defence of New Orleans about 
him, was sent to take charge of the situation. 
His procedure was characteristic. He marched 
straight into Florida, scattering the Indians as 
he advanced, and seized the Spanish town of 
Saint Mark's. Among the captives taken here 
was a substantial trader named Arbuthnot, a 
British subject, whose home was the island of 
Nassau. He was well known to the American 
commander as a man of influence with the In- 
dians, and as one who believed that the Semi- 
noles had been unjustly treated by the United 
States. Garrisoning Saint Mark's, Jackson set 
out for the chief town of the Seminoles, a hun- 
dred miles away, but on reaching it after a dif- 



READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 37 

ficult march, found it deserted, and thus was 
unable to dehver the crushing blow that he had 
planned. From a white man whom he cap- 
tured he discovered that a letter from Arbuth- 
not had warned the Indians of the impending 
danger and prompted their escape. Robert 
Ambrister, an employee of Arbuthnot and also 
a British subject, was captured in the vicinity 
of the Indian town. All the circumstances 
seemed to Jackson to call for summary proceed- 
ings. Returning to Saint Mark's, he brought 
the luckless Britons before a court martial, con- 
victed them of various offences under the laws 
of war, and had Arbuthnot hanged and Ambris- 
ter shot. 

The doughty general's vigor did not end with 
these achievements. A little later he felt obliged 
to go and capture Pensacola again, and teach 
the Spanish governor the error of his ways. 
This incident was not necessary, however, to 
set the wheels of international controversy in 
motion; they were spinning at top speed already. 
The summary execution of two British subjects 
by an American general at a place where the 
right of the victims to be secure was more ap- 
parent than the right of the commander to be 
at all, caused a great explosion of wrath in 



38 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

England. At the very first reports of what 
had occurred, the press flamed with demands 
for the vindication of Britain's outraged honor. 
The cabinet were much embarrassed to refrain 
from serious action before the arrival of full and 
official information as to the afi^air. War might 
have been brought about, Castlereagh later 
told Rush, *'if the ministry had but held up a 
finger." When all the facts were known, how- 
ever, the government was fully justified in its 
caution; for on the evidence submitted it was 
obliged to admit that Arbuthnot and Ambrister 
had by their relations with the Indians forfeited 
the right to protection by the British Govern- 
ment against the military power of the United 
States. Jackson's high-handed proceedings in 
Florida were in the long run more violently 
assailed in his own country than abroad. The 
Monroe administration only with much dif- 
ficulty agreed upon sustaining him, and rival 
politicians in Congress attacked him without 
mercy. Popular feeling, however, especially in 
the West, was enthusiastically in his favor, and 
eventually made him President of the United 
States. Not least among the influences that 
worked to bring him this distinction was the 
wide-spread tradition that in executing Arbuth- 



READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 39 

not and Ambrister he had deliberately flouted 
and defied Great Britain. 

The correct and friendly attitude of the 
British Government was manifested in other 
incidents during this period. Even on so stub- 
bornly contested a point as the right of search 
Rush had reason to believe that an agreement 
would have been reached if Castlereagh had 
been able to remain in personal supervision of 
the negotiations. The foreign secretary was 
called away to the Continent at a critical stage 
of the discussion, after having given very clear 
indications of his individual disposition to go 
far in yielding. In the negotiation of the treaty 
of commerce, also, Frederick John Robinson, 
the chief British representative, intimated a 
feeling that the American demands were too 
early in time rather than too objectionable in 
substance to be conceded. 

It was inherent in the general condition of 
world politics that America should be seeking 
new things and Great Britain should be stand- 
ing by the old. Especially was this the case 
in regard to commerce and navigation. The 
newcomer among maritime powers found her- 
self barred in every direction from profitable 
trade by the existing system under which every 



40 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

nation protected its own merchants and ship- 
ping interests by excluding foreigners from its 
jurisdiction save under heavy burdens. To the 
Americans it seemed something Hke a violation 
of natural justice that they should be forbidden 
to sell a cargo of goods in Halifax or Jamaica; 
yet such was British law. It was hard to ques- 
tion the right of a government to exclude for- 
eigners from its ports; but the desperate eager- 
ness of the Americans for certain kinds of trade 
led them at times to take the ground that free- 
dom of commercial intercourse was so pro- 
foundly an interest of all mankind as fairly to 
be within the domain of natural law. Such a 
trend of argument could, of course, have no 
practical effect in any concrete case; the Brit- 
ish, entrenched in commanding commercial sites 
all over the globe, could and did merely 
inquire what the Americans could offer for the 
privileges they sought. Bargaining of the kind 
thus suggested was a very unsatisfactory proc- 
ess where there was such disparity between 
the two parties in actual possessions. It was 
like the freedom of contract in a later day that 
was alleged to be a sufficient principle on which 
to base the relations of wage-earner and wage- 
payer. 



READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 41 

In the treaty of commerce and navigation of 
18 1 5, which was, as stated above, a recurrence 
to ante-bellum conditions, there was one pro- 
vision that proved to be influential in breaking 
down the ancient system of commercial restric- 
tion. For the first time on record, two nations 
agreed by treaty to abandon the recourse to 
discriminating duties, Great Britain limiting 
her concession to her European territories. 
Commodities produced in these territories and 
the United States respectively were to pay as 
favorable customs duties as were paid by the 
products of any other nation, and tonnage 
duties were to be precisely the same on British 
and American ships in the ports of both powers. 
As discrimination in duties was a favorite means 
of carrying out the old restrictive policy, this 
reciprocal concession of equality was a dis- 
tinct step toward a different system. It be- 
came, in fact, a model for a long line of later con- 
ventions by which the nations advanced in the 
path of commercial freedom. The treaty of 
1815 was tentative only, being limited by its 
terms to four years. It was renewed for ten 
years by the treaty of 18 18, and later was re- 
newed indefinitely. 

It is not to be gainsaid that the motive of 



42 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

the powers in promoting as they did the cause 
of freedom of commerce was mainly a shrewd 
calculation of immediate self-interest rather 
than any devotion to an abstract ideal. Equally 
beyond question is it that the ideals that per- 
vaded the intellectual atmosphere of the day 
were wholly adverse to the old system. After 
the Napoleonic storm had subsided, doctrines 
that had played a large part in producing the 
French Revolution, but had been driven to 
cover by the course taken by that convulsion, 
began to assume prominence in England. The 
economic theories of Adam Smith and the legal 
and political dogmas of Jeremy Bentham won 
adherents if not yet respectability. These sys- 
tems, in all their implications, were hostile to 
the existing institutions of Great Britain. Un- 
derlying both philosophies was the concep- 
tion of man as a free and intelligent being, 
working out, each individual for himself, the 
mode and content of his welfare. British com- 
merce and industry were based upon a complex 
of regulations and restrictions designed to favor 
particular kinds of business and special classes 
of people; and the government which dis- 
tributed the favor was itself controlled by a 
particular business and a special class of people. 



READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 43 

Between the two political parties, Tory and 
Whig, the only important difference was as to 
what interests and classes should be preferred; 
neither contemplated a political or economic 
system in which preference should have no 
place. This latter idea found expression, how- 
ever, through the radical reformers who began 
about 1820 to exert a perceptible influence on 
British thought. Between that date and 1850 
a far-reaching transformation was effected in 
economic and political conditions, chiefly by 
the Whigs. Much as this party detested the 
Radicals, the general character of the reforms 
that it effected followed the lines laid out by 
the acute reasoning of the Benthamite school — 
the two Mills, Ricardo, Grote, Joseph Hume, 
Austin, and Molesworth. 

In America the conditions which the British 
approached as far-distant ideals were conspic- 
uous facts. Within the vast region controlled 
by the United States commercial and industrial 
freedom was complete. No legal barriers re- 
stricted a man's choice among the opportuni- 
ties for self-betterment that beckoned in every 
direction. Whether he devoted his energies to 
farming or to manufacturing or to trade was 
determined solely by his judgment as to the 



44 READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 

profit to be expected; and what he should raise 
on his farm, what he should make in his work- 
shop, or to whom he should sell the products 
of his labor, was a question to be settled by 
no different criterion. Politically, the freedom 
of the individual was only less complete. Prop- 
erty qualifications for the suff^rage and for hold- 
ing office generally prevailed, but were of con- 
sequence only in the eastern States. In the 
growing West, where differences of wealth were 
as slight and rare as all other marks of social 
inequality, distinctions in political rights were 
from the outset unknown in fact and were early 
banished from the law. 

Thus it was true that despite the enormous 
differences between the two great societies of 
English-speaking people, a subtle force was 
operating to bring them together. Every step 
in Great Britain toward breaking down the 
ancient system of privilege and res<triction was 
an approach, however unintended, toward the 
democratic ideal. Every step in the United 
States toward national consolidation involved 
such development and fostering of special in- 
terests, however reluctantly, as to limit per- 
ceptibly the laissez-faire individualism of the 
democratic fact. The progress of the two na- 



READJUSTMENT AFTER WAR 45 

tions in the indicated directions was made very 
manifest in the history of their internal devel- 
opment during the decades of the thirties and 
the forties. 



CHAPTER II 

WHIG REFORM AND JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 

The transition to the full tide of Whiggery 
in Great Britain and of Jacksonianism in the 
United States was marked by the ascendancy 
respectively of George Canning and John Quincy 
Adams. Canning succeeded Castlereagh as for- 
eign secretary in 1822, became prime minister 
in 1827, and after a few months died in that 
office. Adams was secretary of state under 
Monroe for eight years, 1817-25, and was Pres- 
ident from 1825 to 1829. So largely was the 
interest of both these statesmen centred on 
foreign affairs that something distinctive in the 
relations of the two powers could reasonably 
be expected at this time. Nothing novel oc- 
curred, however, in connection with the familiar 
subjects of debate: the right of search, com- 
merce, navigation, fisheries — all remained sub- 
stantially as before. Yet the distinctive some- 
thing did not fail to appear. In 1823 the group 

of policies famous collectively and individually 

46 



REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 47 

as the Monroe Doctrine was promulgated in 
the President's annual message, and the fact 
and form and time of the announcement re- 
flected in no small measure the influence of both 
Canning and Adams. 

Canning did not like the American democ- 
racy. The attitude of the Foreign Office after 
he took charge was significantly different from 
what it had been under Castlereagh. If the 
latter in his soul felt a Tory contempt for the 
Americans, he took pains to keep it from af- 
fecting his diplomatic intercourse with them. 
Canning was not so successful in this. The 
truth seems to be that Castlereagh regarded his 
policy in European affairs as requiring that 
America be kept quiet and contented, so as not 
to interfere with the progress of really impor- 
tant matters. To him the great American Re- 
public gave no concern; to Canning it was the 
object of distrust and fear. Yet Canning did 
not hesitate to make the United States an 
instrument of his own policy. When engaged 
in the operations through which, as he elo- 
quently boasted, he *'caUed the New World 
into existence to redress the balance of the 
Old," he sought the co-operation of the Amer- 
ican Government. President Monroe's mes- 



48 REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 

sage of 1823 signified to a certain extent the 
success of Canning's advances. Its pronounce- 
ments as a whole, however, were widely at 
variance with the British secretary's desires 
and expectations, and caused him annoyance 
and vexation that he ultimately took no pains 
to conceal. He was confirmed in his feeling of 
dislike and distrust of the Americans and in 
his foreboding of danger from their rivalry with 
British interests in the future. 

The European situation that produced the 
Monroe Doctrine is familiar history. A revo- 
lution in Spain that jeoparded the throne and 
life of the King brought military intervention 
by France, supported by Russia, Prussia, and 
Austria. The Spanish monarch was restored 
to his authority at home, but found himself 
wholly unable to regain control of his continen- 
tal colonies in America, which had declared and 
were successfully maintaining their independ- 
ence. Accordingly, he applied to the powers 
that had assisted him for like assistance on the 
other side of the Atlantic. The British Govern- 
ment had refused to join the other powers in 
the intervention in Spain, and had viewed with 
great uneasiness the proceedings of the French 
army. Tories were unpleasantly reminded by 



REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 49 

the situation of the days when Napoleonic 
France had possession of Spain; Whigs and the 
HberaHzing element of the Tories were dis- 
gusted with Bourbon absolutism wherever it 
appeared. British commerce with the insur- 
gent Spanish colonies was much harassed by 
the irregular privateering and ineffective block- 
ades through which the Spaniards maintained 
the semblance, with but little of the substance, 
of war. This commerce had attained large pro- 
portions and all its advantages would be lost if 
Spanish authority should be restored; for Spain, 
like Britain herself, regarded colonial trade as an 
exclusive privilege of the mother country. 

Under all the circumstances Canning was 
readily able, at the first manifestation of a proj- 
ect for intervention in behalf of Spain in Amer- 
ica, to gain substantial support for his purpose 
to thwart it. An indication of interest in the 
general subject by Rush, the minister at Lon- 
don, was promptly made by Canning the oc- 
casion of a suggestion for a joint, or at least a 
simultaneous, declaration by the United States 
and Great Britain of their hostility to the threat- 
ened intervention. The idea was received with 
the liveliest interest at Washington and was the 
subject of the most serious consideration by 



50 REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 

the President, the cabinet, and even Jefferson 
and Madison, whose opinions were confidentially 
sought by Monroe. Abundant reasons were 
perceived for refraining from formal association 
with Great Britain in a declaration of policy, 
but the wisdom of some pronouncement was 
not questioned by any. Accordingly, the fa- 
miliar paragraphs were inserted in the Presi- 
dent's annual message to Congress in December. 
After a general expression of sympathy with 
the peoples of Europe in their struggles for lib- 
erty and happiness, and of a purpose, never- 
theless, to abstain from taking part in any wars 
there, the momentous declaration was made: 

With the movements in this hemisphere we are, of 
necessity, more immediately connected, and by causes 
which must be obvious to all enlightened and impartial 
observers. The political system of the allied powers is 
essentially different in this respect from that of America. 
The difference proceeds from that which exists in their 
respective governments. And to the defence of our own, 
which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood 
and treasure, and matured by the wisdom of their most 
enlightened citizens, and under which we have enjoyed 
such unexampled felicity, this whole nation is devoted. 
We owe it, therefore, to candor, and to the amicable re- 
lations existing between the United States and those 
powers, to declare that we should consider any attempt 
on their part to extend their system to any portion of this 
hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With 



REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 51 

the existing colonies or dependencies of any European 
power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. 
But with the governments who have declared their inde- 
pendence and maintained it, and whose independence we 
have, on great consideration and on just principles, ac- 
knowledged, we could not view any interposition for the 
purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other 
manner their destiny, by any European power, in any 
other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly 
disposition toward the United States. . . . 

... It is impossible that the allied powers should ex- 
tend their political system to any portion of either con- 
tinent without endangering our peace and happiness; nor 
can any one believe that our southern brethren, if left 
to themselves, would adopt it of their own accord. It is 
equally impossible, therefore, that we should behold such 
interposition, in any form, with indifference. 



So far as concerned the particular subject 
that evoked these paragraphs, they were en- 
tirely efficacious. No possibility was left of 
intervention in America by the allied powers. 
As a matter of fact the project was dead before 
the President spoke; for Canning had secured 
assurances from the French Government that 
it would not take part in the proposed action, 
and without French aid the powers would be 
as helpless as the Spanish King himself. This 
situation was not known outside of diplomatic 
circles when Monroe's message appeared. In 
consequence, the public announcement, in such 



52 REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 

uncompromising terms, of the attitude of the 
United States appeared very decisive and made 
a prodigious sensation both at home and abroad. 
That so weighty a judgment on a question of 
world poUtics should emanate from Washington, 
satisfied the spirit of the most ardent patriots 
in America; in England the Whigs and Radicals 
rejoiced at the alliance of the two English-speak- 
ing nations for the defence of liberty against 
the despots of the Holy Alliance, and even the 
Tories found something to approve in the aid 
given by the Americans to a keen stroke of 
British policy. The press on both sides of the 
Atlantic teemed for a time with expressions of 
amicable feeling. 

Canning accepted with complacency the flat- 
tering tributes to his skill and astuteness in 
bringing America to the aid of Britain. He 
had, however, no illusions about the realities of 
the case. He perceived at first sight, in the 
salving ointment of Monroe's message, a very 
unpleasant and dangerous insect. In the par- 
agraphs that have been quoted there was, he 
saw, a conspicuous lack of care to discriminate 
precisely among the "European powers," so as 
to exclude Great Britain from the warning 
addressed to them. It was not hard to read 



REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 53 

the document as embodying the claim that the 
American continents were to be reserved for 
repubUcan, as contrasted with monarchic, in- 
stitutions — a reservation that would shut out 
George IV of Great Britain as effectively as it 
would Ferdinand VII of Spain. In another part 
of the message, moreover, quite unrelated to 
that which dealt with the matter of the Euro- 
pean intervention on behalf of Spain, a pro- 
nouncement was made that revealed with 
distinctness the spirit suspected by Canning. 
Apropos of negotiations with Russia concern- 
ing the respective claims to the Pacific coast, 
this passage occurred: 

. . . the occasion has been judged proper for asserting 
as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United 
States are involved, that the American continents, by 
the free and independent condition which they have as- 
sumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered 
as subjects for future colonization by any European 
powers. 

Here again was a warning to all European pow- 
ers, and in connection with a matter — coloniza- 
tion — that was a specialty of Great Britain. 
Canning was assured that the reference in the 
passage was to a reported project of Russia for 
a southward extension of her settlements on 



54 REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 

the Pacific coast of America. He took pains 
to declare, however, that his government did 
not accept the principle laid down, and he 
emphasized his protest by withdrawing from 
association with the United States in the nego- 
tiations at Saint Petersburg by which the limit 
of Russian claims in America was fixed. 

Canning was right in restraining his enthu- 
siasm over Monroe's message. It was, in fact, 
the pronunciamento of a great democracy just 
arrived at aggressive self-consciousness. Its un- 
derlying spirit was in very truth antagonism, 
so far as concerned affairs of the Western Hemi- 
sphere, to all monarchic Europe, Great Britain 
included. The significant passages in the doc- 
ument owed their phraseology, in great part, 
to John Quincy Adams; and he has left on rec- 
ord abundant evidence that no sentiment of 
attachment to Great Britain would ever in- 
fluence him to except her from the sweep of 
a policy devised to promote the interest and 
glory of his own government. Canning in- 
stinctively resented the spirit of which Adams 
was the particular embodiment. Hence the 
marked subsidence, after 1823, of the demon- 
strative warmth which the Monroe Doctrine 
of that year temporarily produced between the 



REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 55 

two governments. They had become serious 
rivals for the controlUng interest in American 
affairs. 

During the last two years of Canning's life, 
1825-27, the diplomatic situation in general was 
very unpleasant. What he had tried most dil- 
igently to prevent, when he summoned the New 
World to solve the problems of the Old, seemed 
near to realization, namely, the confronting of 
monarchic Europe by a solidly republican Amer- 
ica. The establishment of monarchy in Brazil 
he had regarded with much satisfaction, and 
Iturbide's imperial enterprise in Mexico seemed 
to him likely to provide a useful counterpoise 
to the influence of the United States. The 
melancholy failure of Iturbide confirmed the 
disappointment that Monroe's message created. 
It only remained to oppose at every point the 
ambition of the United States, and to be un- 
ceasingly watchful against the development of 
her claims. In a familiar letter to Bagot, now 
ambassador at Saint Petersburg, of July 29, 
1824, Canning urged haste in concluding with 
Russia a convention assuring to Great Britain 
the right of navigation in Behring Sea and 
Straits. ''There is very nice 'bobbing for 
whale' they tell me, tpsis Behringi in Jaucibus, 



S6 REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 

which must be guarded." And then he added, 
with a prophetic vision that the future was re- 
markably to verify: "We shall have a squabble 
with the Yankees yet in and about these 
regions." 

The most explicit revelation of Canning's 
feelings and policy at this time is seen in a 
secret despatch to Vaughan, the British minister 
at Washington, recently brought to light by Pro- 
fessor E. D. Adams. It is dated February 8, 
1826, and relates to certain discussions con- 
cerning Cuba. 

The general maxim that our interest and those of the 
United States are essentially the same, etc., etc., is one 
that cannot be too readily admitted, when put forward 
by the United States. 

But we must not be the dupes of this conventional lan- 
guage of courtesy. 

The avowed pretension of the United States to put 
themselves at the head of the confederacy of all the 
Americas, and to sway that confederacy against Europe, 
(Great Britain included), is 710/ a pretension identified 
with our interests, or one that we can countenance as 
tolerable. 

It is however a pretension which there is no use in con- 
testing in the abstract; but we must not say anything 
that seems to admit the principle.^ 

When this note was penned, the two gov- 
ernments were in the midst of a long and 

' Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, November, 
1912, p. 234. 



REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 57 

disagreeable controversy over the trade with 
the British-American colonies. Parliament, en- 
gaged in revising the Navigation Laws, opened 
the colonial ports in America to foreign vessels 
on certain conditions in 1825. The United 
States refused to accept the conditions, and 
took ground, both through the Department of 
State and in Congress, that seemed to question 
the right of Great Britain to impose restrictions 
at her discretion on commerce in her own col- 
onies. To Canning and his party this was but 
another exhibition of the *' forwardness, not to 
say impudence," that was typical of the Amer- 
ican policy, especially when directed by Adams. 
It was met therefore by an open and unmis- 
takable snub. An Order in Council closed the 
West Indian ports absolutely to American ships. 
The order was issued while Gallatin was on his 
way to England, for the special purpose of set- 
tling by negotiation this and other questions 
between the two governments. On his arrival 
he was met by a flat refusal to discuss in 
any way the matter of the West Indian trade, 
and was left entirely in the dark as to the 
reason for the unexpected attitude of the gov- 
ernment. 

Gallatin's despatches after his arrival, in 



58 REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 

August, 1826, indicate very well the impression 
made by the Canning administration. 

There is certainly an alteration in the disposition of 
this government since the year 181 8, when I was here 
before. Lord Castlereagh and Mr. Robinson had it more 
at heart to cherish friendly relations than Mr. Canning 
and Mr. Huskisson. The difference may, however, be 
in the times rather than in the men. Treated in general 
with considerable arrogance till the last war, with great 
attention, if not respect, during the years that followed it, 
the United States are now an object of jealousy; and a 
policy founded on that feeling has been avowed. 

This was written to Clay. To Adams Gallatin 
wrote : 

... it is impossible for me not to see and feel the temper 
that prevails here toward us . . . quite changed from 
what it was in 181 5-1 821; nearly as bad as before the 
last war, only they hate more and despise less, though 
they still affect to conceal hatred under the appearance 
of contempt. 

This diplomatic irritation did not penetrate 
deeply into the national tissues. Its cause lay 
largely in the personalities of Canning and 
Adams. Party politics on both sides of the 
ocean contributed somewhat to increase and 
prolong the inflammation. But Canning died 
in August, 1827; and it is probably more than 
a mere coincidence that in that month and the 



REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 59 

following no less than three conventions were 
signed for the provisional settlement of ques- 
tions at issue between the two governments. 
By these conventions the joint occupation of 
Oregon and the commercial treaty of 18 15 were 
renewed indefinitely, subject to abrogation by 
either party on twelve months' notice, and the 
northeastern boundary was referred to arbitra- 
tion. The West India trade situation was thus 
left the sole disturbing feature of the rela- 
tions between the governments. It played a 
part in the presidential campaign of 1828, in 
which Adams failed of re-election. The suc- 
ceeding administration, that of General Jackson, 
with Martin Van Buren as secretary of state, 
promptly reversed the policy of the United 
States, dropped the contentions that Adams had 
sustained, and came to an agreement with Great 
Britain on her own terms. In the autumn of 
1830 commerce between the United States and 
the British West Indies, with some limitations 
still remaining, was reopened, and the contro- 
versy over the subject ceased to trouble the 
intercourse of the governments. 

Pending the final disposition of this question 
the long domination of the Tory party in Great 
Britain came to an end. Incompatibilities of, 



6o REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 

personality and principles between Canning 
and his friends on one side and the ultra-Tory 
element led by the Duke of Wellington on 
the other, hastened this event. In 1830 the 
Whigs, headed by Earl Grey, assumed the 
reins of power and entered upon a famous era 
of internal reform. Domestic politics on both 
sides of the Atlantic assumed an absorbing im- 
portance, and the diplomatic relations became 
cordially calm. 

The far-reaching transformation, industrial, 
social, and political, that marked the decade 
of the thirties in the United Kingdom had its 
culmination rather than its inception under 
the regime of the Whigs. The forces making 
for change became very manifest immediately 
upon the restoration of peace in 18 15. A sud- 
den shift from the condition of general European 
war to that of universal peace was necessarily 
accompanied by a vast displacement and read- 
justment in the field of trade and industry. 
British commerce and manufactures had flour- 
ished greatly during the war, thanks to the 
immunity of the United Kingdom from the rav- 
ages of contending armies, and to her unques- 
tioned control of the sea. With peace the 
peoples of the Continent resumed their normal 



REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 6i 

productive activities and British trade heavily 
declined. Prices fell; complications in the cur- 
rency, due to the suspension of specie payments, 
aggravated the troubles; bad harvests recurred 
at unfortunate intervals; and the great change 
in progress in the methods of manufacturing, 
owing to the introduction of machinery, con- 
tributed in its turn a quota of evil. The gen- 
eral result was unsettlement, discontent, and 
from time to time severe distress among the 
working classes, both agricultural and indus- 
trial. Into the field thus well prepared came 
agitators of the political type. Radicals, preach- 
ing the doctrines of the French and Americans, 
and demanding universal suffrage, voting by 
ballot, and other reforms of a sort to shock the 
Tories beyond expression. 

To the governing classes these popular move- 
ments were but a manifestation of the subver- 
sive spirit that had animated the French Revo- 
lution and was still troubling the Continental 
rulers. In 1819, after a fatal conflict between 
the people and the military at Manchester, 
Parliament enacted the "Six Acts," which im- 
posed severe restrictions on the press and on 
the holding of public meetings. These were 
the methods of suppressing political opposition 



62 REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 

that were in use on the Continent, and they 
were felt by the less reactionary element in 
Great Britain to be inconsistent with the tra- 
ditions of English liberty. Whether because of 
the odium thus incurred, or because of their very 
effectiveness itself, the Six Acts marked prac- 
tically the culmination of the policy of aggres- 
sive severity against the Radical agitation. 
It became increasingly clear to Whigs and lib- 
eral Tories alike that the recurring popular dis- 
turbances were due quite as much to deep- 
lying economic causes as to the mere idealism 
and ambition of visionaries and Radicals. The 
advent of Canning to the position of chief in- 
fluence in the government in 1822 contributed 
to the change in the trend of official feeling. 
Under Castlereagh's dominance the cordiality 
between Great Britain and the allied monarchs 
of the Continent in foreign policy promoted a 
correspondence in domestic policy. Canning's 
spectacular and defiant break with the powers, 
and his open support of insurgents in Europe 
and in America, gave inspiration and hope to 
those who were looking for extensive, if not 
technically Radical, changes in ancient British 
institutions. 
The anticipated process of reform promptly 



REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 63 

made its appearance. Huskisson, brought by 
Canning to the presidency of the Board of 
Trade, was deeply imbued with the doctrines 
of Adam Smith as to keeping the hands of the 
government off commerce and industry. The 
ancient restrictions through which business was 
parcelled out among particular groups and se- 
cured to them at all hazards, were incompat- 
ible with Huskisson's principles and were, more- 
over, at present working to the disadvantage of 
the favored classes and producing the disturb- 
ances that were so significant signs of the times. 
First, the shipping industry received Huskisson's 
attention. The Navigation Laws had for a cen- 
tury and a half given monopolistic protection 
to British merchant-vessels and had secured 
for them a clear control of the carrying trade 
of the world. The United States was now 
contesting that control and was using in the 
competition the same methods by which Great 
Britain had secured it, namely, a monopolistic 
protection of American shipping against all 
foreign rivals. Parliament dropped in 1823 
the rigidity of the old policy by authorizing the 
government to suspend the application of the 
laws through agreements with other govern- 
ments for reciprocal advantages. This was the 



64 REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 

beginning of the end of the old system. A 
quarter of a century elapsed before the final 
step was taken that opened the ports of Great 
Britain without restriction to the shipping of 
all the world. 

In the next two years laws were passed giving 
recognition to the new conditions in manufac- 
turing that the industrial revolution had brought 
into prominence. Labor troubles in the mod- 
ern sense, contests over wages between factory- 
owners and employees, had become a conspic- 
uous element in the popular agitations of the 
time. Under the ancient legal system the em- 
ployers had every advantage in the chronic 
struggle. Great as was the fear in Parliament of 
the working classes, it gave way before clear 
evidence that the law imposed upon them 
something near to the lot of the slave. To 
help himself was a right that the spirit of the 
day regarded as inherent in every British free- 
man. Hence the old statutes were repealed 
which prohibited meetings and associations of 
workmen for getting increase of wages, and 
even forbade artisans absolutely to leave the 
country. 

The progress of this reforming legislation 
was followed with deep concern and covert hos- 



REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 65 

tility by the extreme Tories. It did not so 
directly affect the ruHng aristocracy as a whole, 
however, as to excite a decisive opposition. 
Quite otherwise was the case with the Corn 
Law, on which the rents of the landowners 
were believed absolutely to depend. Protec- 
tion to the domestic grain-growers was by this 
legislation ingeniously complete. Duties on im- 
ported grain varied with the price in England; 
importation was prohibited so long as the price 
was under a maximum figure; and exportation 
was stimulated by bounties when the price fell 
below a minimum figure. Despite the guar- 
antee thus apparently established that Great 
Britain should produce the food for her own 
people at a fair and steady cost, there was 
continual friction over the matter. Prices 
fluctuated disastrously with variations of the 
weather, and Were never low enough for the 
consumers or high enough for the farmers and 
the landlords. Parliament was called upon 
repeatedly to consider exceptional modifica- 
tions of the system, in order to check distress 
among the farmers or the working classes. De- 
mands became frequent and loud for a radical 
change that should do away with the high pro- 
tection to grain-growers; but here the aristo- 



66 REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 

cratic landed interest by which both parties 
were controlled stood firm and unyielding. 
The Corn Law was to prove the last strong- 
hold of the old system to be carried by the ris- 
ing middle-class industrial interest. After the 
death of Canning in 1827 his powerful patronage 
was seen to have been indispensable to the re- 
forming projects of Huskisson; for there soon 
came open rupture between the Canningites 
and the ultra-Tories headed by the Duke of 
Wellington. Differences about the Corn Law 
had much to do with this dissension, though 
two other subjects took precedence in practical 
consideration when the reforming influence got 
the upper hand. 

The first of these subjects was Catholic eman- 
cipation. In 1829 the general disqualification of 
Catholics for holding oflice or sitting in Parlia- 
ment was finally removed. This action had 
long been sought by enlightened statesmen, 
and had failed of realization in law only through 
the dogged resistance of royalty itself. The 
relief act of 1829 was significant less from its 
content than from the means through which its 
passage, despite the sullen opposition of the 
King and a few bigoted advisers, was made 
unavoidable. Daniel O'Connell, between 1823 



REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 67 

and 1829, made Catholic Ireland self-conscious 
and strong enough to paralyze entirely the 
authority of the legal government. He did 
this without bloodshed and without giving a 
chance to his adversaries to use against him 
with any success the processes of the ordinary 
law or to find ground for resort to exceptional 
measures. His method was agitation, of a 
species so astutely controlled and regulated as 
to make the maximum impression with the 
minimum opportunity for lawlessness. The 
feature of his triumph that caused the deepest 
alarm in the ruling class was the severance of 
the Irish tenantry from almost slavish depend- 
ence on their landlords. The creation thus of 
an independent spirit in the mass of the Irish 
population was destined to produce most revo- 
lutionary results in the long run on the relations 
between England and Ireland; its immediate 
influence on the political movements in Great 
Britain was of the utmost concern to the class 
that was opposing the onward sweep of reform. 
The removal of disabilities from the Catholics 
was efl^ected while the Tory cabinet of Welling- 
ton and Peel was still in power. A year later, 
in 1830, the Whigs, led by Earl Grey and 
Brougham, came into control for the first time 



68 REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 

in a quarter of a century, and at once opened 
the famous struggle for Parliamentary reform. 
The demand for this reform received a great 
impulse from the revolutionary wave that swept 
over the Continent, and the popular agitation 
in Great Britain, reflecting the methods of 
O'Connell's late operations in Ireland, assumed 
a very threatening aspect. The Tories fought 
with dogged energy to retain the ancient power 
and privilege of the landed interest. Two years 
of violent political strife resulted, however, in 
the enactment of the reform. Through its pro- 
visions the House of Commons ceased to be 
under the control of the landed aristocracy and 
became fairly representative of the industrial 
class that was assuming such importance in the 
growing towns. The apportionment of seats 
among the constituencies was based in some 
measure upon the number of the population, 
thus recognizing a principle that was dear to 
the democratic reformer. Moreover, while the 
landed aristocracy still retained its control of 
the House of Lords, the passage of the Reform 
Bill had finally been effected by a proceeding 
that showed how, in a contest between the two 
houses, the Commons could constitutionally 
carry the day. 



REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 69 

The Parliamentary reform of 1832 did not 
make Great Britain a democracy, but it put 
in a very clear light a trend of social and polit- 
ical progress that must narrow the distance 
between the British and the American systems. 
All the reforming movements that have been 
noticed promoted liberty, in the sense of re- 
moving from some class of the population re- 
strictions which, however valuable at one time, 
had lost their utility. In the United States the 
restrictions had never existed, because they 
had never been useful; and for that reason and 
in the sense suggested America had led Great 
Britain in respect to liberty. The era of the 
Reform Act was signalized by the appearance 
of political practices that were new and terrify- 
ing in England. Associations for partisan agi- 
tation among the townspeople were larger, 
wealthier, and better organized than had ever 
been the case before. Both leaders and follow- 
ers in these political unions displayed a high 
degree of genuine skill in the game of politics 
and beat the aristocracy in the field where it 
claimed to be alone qualified to appear. The 
repressive legislation of 18 19 was no longer in 
effect, so far as its most rigorous features were 
concerned, and the British people enjoyed in 



70 REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 

far larger measure than any other European 
nation the liberty to organize and assemble 
for peaceful discussion and to express opinions 
in speech or print. Popular sentiment was 
readily articulate. Doctrines much too radi- 
cal for the possibility of adoption were never- 
theless freely canvassed. The periodical press 
was expanded and cheapened to correspond to 
the widening of political interest and intelli- 
gence. In all these conditions there was a 
fundamental bond of sympathy between Great 
Britain and the United States. The progress- 
ive Radicals in England were conscious of this, 
and systematically adduced American examples 
in support of their demands for reforms. Across 
the Atlantic the Americans, so far as they were 
informed of British conditions, threw their sym- 
pathy with the Radicals. The Whig species 
of reform aroused but a qualified enthusiasm 
in the United States. It was Whig reform, how- 
ever, that was alone destined to be practically 
feasible in Great Britain for many decades to 
come. 

After 1832 the reformed Parliament, under 
Whig control, continued the process of remov- 
ing inveterate abuses. With many of its great- 
est measures, such as Poor-Law reform and the 



REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 71 

rationalizing of municipal government, our con- 
cern is too slight for more than passing men- 
tion. Other legislation, however, had a defi- 
nite bearing on relations with the United States. 
In 1833 an act was passed abolishing slavery 
in the British West Indies, by a process that 
became actually complete five years later. In 
1835 the ancient methods of impressment in 
recruiting for the navy were practically ended 
by legislation regulating the procedure and at 
the same time encouraging voluntary enlist- 
ment by bounties and pensions. 

The abolition of slavery in the West In- 
dian colonies marked the triumph of a long 
agitation, begun by Wilberforce and continued 
by the Quakers and Buxton. The African slave- 
trade had been prohibited by Parliament, largely 
through Wilberforce's efforts, as early as 1807, 
only a year before a like prohibition was enacted 
by the Congress of the United States. British 
and American vessels were thus excluded from 
a very lucrative business, but the humanitarian 
purpose of the legislation was not in any large 
measure achieved, for the trade continued to 
flourish. Under the continuous pressure of the 
Abolitionists the British Government sought 
to arrange by treaty for the co-operation of 



72 REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 

Other governments in suppressing the traffic. 
The subject was repeatedly brought up in con- 
ference with the representatives of the United 
States, and a treaty was actually agreed to in 
1824, but failed through the unwillingness of 
Great Britain to accept amendments made by 
the Senate. The difference between the two 
governments over the right of visitation and 
search was the real cause of the failure. It was 
clear that the slave-trade could never be ex- 
tinguished save by some arrangement for an 
international patrol of the coasts and seas where 
the traffic was carried on. Such arrangement 
would necessarily involve the examination by 
a war-ship of suspected vessels flying colors 
other than those of the overhauling cruiser. 
A reciprocal authorization of such procedure 
as between American and British cruisers the 
United States would never consent to; since 
it was held to admit the right of a British cap- 
tain to search a ship bearing the American flag, 
and this the United States was firm in its reso- 
lution never to concede. The British were 
equally tenacious in opposing any kind of ar- 
rangement that might be construed as an aban- 
donment of the right. 

The long-standing tension over the right of 



REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 73 

search thus prevented the two great EngHsh- 
speaking peoples from uniting for the effective 
suppression of a business that was admitted by 
both to be a scandal to civilization. Nor was 
the situation improved when Parliament enacted 
the laws that practically put an end to impress- 
ment, of which the right of search was an inci- 
dent. Nothing in this legislation formally abol- 
ished the old system of recruiting, and the 
Foreign Office remained as tenacious of the claim 
to take British sailors from foreign ships as Par- 
liament was of the undoubted right to take 
them by force wherever the royal jurisdiction 
extended. Whatever the era of reform effected 
in respect to the practice, the time had not yet 
come when the theory of personal liberty for 
Britons would extend to that class on whose 
service the safety of the empire was believed to 
be in a special way dependent. 

Conditions in the United States also contrib- 
uted to prevent the harmony of the gov- 
ernments in respect to the slave-trade. The 
slaveholding interest, concentrated in the cot- 
ton-growing States, became a powerful factor 
in politics during the twenties and thirties. 
Though there was no important sentiment in 
favor of the African slave-trade, there was al- 



74 REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 

ways a base and lawless element in the South- 
ern population who were ready to take part in 
the illicit operations through which small num- 
bers of negroes were often introduced. In 1820 
a violent political contest arose in Congress 
over an issue of internal policy respecting 
slavery, and thenceforth the Southern politi- 
cians were very sensitive to any movements 
affecting the institution. Abolitionism of a 
vehement type made its appearance in the 
North in the early thirties, almost simultane- 
ously with a barbarous insurrection of slaves 
in Virginia. The two events combined to cause 
deep alarm in the South, and the feeling made 
the discussion of any phase of the slavery ques- 
tion highly inexpedient to politicians. Then 
came the emancipation of the slaves of the 
British West Indies. This action, hailed with 
joy by the Abolitionists, confirmed the uneasi- 
ness in the Southern States of the Union. Re- 
sentment toward the British was increased by 
a series of cases in which the colonial authorities 
of the Bahamas and the Bermudas forcibly 
liberated the slaves who happened to be on 
American coasting vessels that came within 
British jurisdiction through stress of weather, 
wreck, and mutiny. That the feeling aroused 



REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 75 

by these various occurrences had an influence 
in making futile the efforts to agree concern- 
ing the slave-trade cannot be doubted; yet 
the difference as to the right of search on the 
high seas was the vital cause of failure. 

The growth and self-consciousness of the 
slaveholding interest in the United States had 
a close relation to other phases of the develop- 
ment of the American democracy. I have said 
above that in the Jacksonian era there was a 
narrowing of the interval which separated the 
American from the British ideals of social struc- 
ture and policy. In Great Britain the trend 
was steadily, as has been noted, toward removal 
of the restrictions that sustained established in- 
terests and privileges. In the United States, 
on the other hand, a pronounced movement 
appeared toward the creation of similar restric- 
tions. The powers of the general government 
had already been devoted, through diplomacy 
and legislation, to vigorous efforts for the pro- 
tection and promotion of foreign trade and the 
mercantile marine. During the twenties a sys- 
tematic agitation was begun for a like degree of 
governmental activity in behalf of the nascent 
manufactures of the Union. Henry Clay, a 
statesman of extraordinary popularity, led this 



76 REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 

movement on its political side, and sustained it 
by fervent appeals for an "American system" 
that should make the United States in all re- 
spects economically self-sufficient, and independ- 
ent of foreign, especially British, producers. 
The result was tariff legislation, culminating 
in 1828, by which heavy protective duties were 
imposed on textiles, iron, and other leading com- 
modities. 

Protectionism of this species was not destined, 
however, to be permanent. Accepted with much 
misgiving in the North and West, it aroused 
violent hostility in the slaveholding States of 
the South. Their sole commercial product was 
cotton, and three-fourths of the crop was ex- 
ported, mostly to Great Britain. To them, 
therefore, the high tariff meant only a disas- 
trous increase of taxation, for the benefit of 
the manufacturers of the North. A bitter op- 
position to the new system was carried on by 
the State of South Carolina, involving serious 
threats of a dissolution of the Union. The 
policy that was proclaimed as necessary to the 
free life and full development of the republic 
thus proved fraught with peril to its very exist- 
ence. Clay himself bowed before the storm 
that he had evoked, and took the lead in legis- 



REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 77 

lation through which, by stages beginning in 
1833, the tariff was so reduced that the protect- 
ive features entirely disappeared. The slave- 
holders whose system exemplified the extreme 
of curtailment of personal liberty thus proved 
the successful champions of a policy that in- 
sured the fullest freedom in respect to property. 
The failure of protectionism was a feature of 
the era of Andrew Jackson. It is with good 
reason that this President's name has become 
descriptive of a period of American history. 
Jacksonian democracy designates a psycholog- 
ical phase in the growth of the republic. It was 
the phase in which a people became fully aware 
of its freedom, unity, and power, and began to 
strive, with pathetically crude and ineffective 
means, to make a useful application of these 
qualities. Jackson was the first President from 
west of the Appalachian Mountains. With him 
began the conspicuous influence of the Missis- 
sippi valley in the American Government. That 
vast region was by 1830 making great strides 
in population and prosperity. Steam trans- 
portation on its innumerable rivers and lakes 
gave a great stimulus to settlement and trade. 
The social type still remained, however, that of 
the frontier, slightly refined, and this was the 



78 REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 

type that Jackson exemplified and impressed 
upon the nation as a whole. Abounding phys- 
ical vigor, courage, self-confidence, resourceful- 
ness, fervid patriotism, Mosaic morality with 
a primitive interpretation, a narrow intellec- 
tual horizon — these were the characteristics that 
were predominant. The problems of social life 
in the simple conditions that generally pre- 
vailed were readily enough solved by a people 
of this type. Where circumstances called for 
the settlement of questions of some complexity, 
such as the growth of the nation brought to the 
front, the popular feeling was often that of 
irritability and suspicion toward those who pro- 
fessed to be able to furnish answers on the basis 
of a scientific knowledge that was beyond the 
reach of the average man. 

This democratic distrust of the expert played 
a large part in the conflict between President 
Jackson and the United States Bank, a conflict 
that most clearly exhibited the tendencies of the 
times. The bank was chartered by Congress 
and had since 1816 served a useful purpose as 
an agency for the fiscal operations of the treas- 
ury and also for providing a currency by its 
note issues. Jackson formed the opinion that 
the bank was a dangerous institution, of a mon- 



REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 79 

opolistic character and repugnant to the Con- 
stitution and to sound pubHc policy. On the 
question of renewing its charter the financial 
and commercial interests of the nation rallied 
strongly to the support of the bank and were 
sustained by a majority in Congress. The Presi- 
dent was able, however, after a spectacular 
struggle, to defeat the renewal and to destroy 
the bank. His economic reasoning was crude 
and primitive, but his appeal to the people 
against the moneyed class that he said was 
oppressing them struck a responsive chord, 
especially in his native West. In a campaign 
that was fought chiefly on the issue of the bank 
Jackson was re-elected in triumph to the presi- 
dency. In popular estimation his patriotic serv- 
ice in destroying the bank took rank with that 
performed when, as was commonly believed, he 
saved his country from the yoke of the British 
by the victory at New Orleans. 

The democratic trend in the political opera- 
tions of the Jacksonian era might be traced in 
many phases of public life. One only may be 
referred to here. It was in Jackson's time that 
the so-called "spoils system," not unknown to 
the practice of the politicians before, became 
openly and on principle employed in manning 



8o REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 

the civil service of the National Government. 
Many influences united, of course, in producing 
this result. What never failed to win support 
for the system, however, was the contention 
that it was democratic — that it was based on 
the idea that where equality was the order of 
.. the day there must be no permanent tenure, 
/ no monopoly, in the service of the people, but 
every individual must be presumed equally 
qualified for the service, every one must have 
the chance in rotation to perform the duties of 
office. Just as the business of banking was to 
be open to all without restriction, so the offices 
of the government must be open to all. And 
no safer test was available of the people's will 
as to the tenant of appointive office at any par- 
ticular time than the result of a contest for 
the great elective offices. The voice of the 
successful party was the voice of the people, 
and the choice of the party leader was the 
sufficient index in any particular case of the 
party's wish as to the tenant of an office. In 
vain was it pointed out by the well-informed 
that patronage of this type was a conspicuous 
feature of the British governmental system and 
a mainstay of aristocratic ascendancy. Amer- 
ican pubhc opinion was incredulous or un- 



REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 8i 

daunted before this argument, and sustained 
the spoils system without flinching in the face 
of the evils that it increasingly involved. 

The era of Jacksonism in America and Whig 
reform in Great Britain was marked by a sig- 
nificant change in the character and extent of 
the information about the republic that was 
embodied in the British literature of the day. 
For a decade and more after the Treaty of Ghent 
Tory sentiment had predominated in both trav- 
ellers' books^ and the periodical press whenever 
the United States was the subject of discus- 
sion. Radicals, humanitarians, agriculturists, 
interested in the conditions among the com- 
mon people, found somewhat to commend in 
the bounty of nature and the material comfort 
and prosperity of man. Social, intellectual, and 
spiritual conditions generally impressed the 
Briton as repulsive and intolerable. Politics 
and government, so far as they were at all in- 
telligible, seemed unbalanced, incoherent, and 
corrupt. These views of the United States 
were systematically and repeatedly set forth, 
with all the effect of skilled literary massing and 
polish, in the great Tory organ of the day, the 
Quarterly Review. Its distinguished Whig rival, 

'See the valuable article by E. D. Adams, "The British Traveler in 
America," in Political Science Quarterly, June, 1914. 



82 REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 

the Edinburgh Review, was less harsh in judg- 
ment on things social and political, but, be- 
cause of its patronizing irony, not less offensive 
to the Americans. In 1820 Sydney Smith pub- 
lished in the Edinburgh Review his famous series 
of questions concerning the culture of Jonathan 
as compared with that of John: "In the four 
quarters of the globe, who reads an American 
book? or goes to an American play? or looks at 
an American picture or statue? . . . Finally, 
under which of the old tyrannical governments 
of Europe is every sixth man a slave, whom his 
fellow creatures may buy and sell and torture?" 
The North American Review and other pub- 
lications took up the cudgels for the Americans 
with spirit, and a wordy warfare raged through 
many years. By the judicious the controversy 
was deprecated; for it obviously stirred up ill 
feeling and misunderstandings on both sides 
of the ocean. The great British reviews were 
regularly reprinted in the United States, and 
though their circulation was small and confined 
chiefly to the towns of the seaboard, all criti- 
cism of the Americans was diligently reproduced 
in the local periodicals, and the exasperation 
was spread to the remotest regions of the Union. 
In Great Britain the influence of the quarterlies 



REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 83 

was chiefly with the ruling class; but here again 
their ideas penetrated to the lower social strata, 
especially through the clergy, and confirmed the 
impression that the Americans were an anarchic, 
godless, brutal crew. In many cases the deter- 
rent efi^ect of such impression was welcomed by 
authorities of church and state whose charges 
sought to escape the misery of recurrent agri- 
cultural distress by emigration. Piety and 
patriotism both required that the emigrant 
should seek a home on British rather than 
American soil — should turn to the Canadas and 
avoid the United States. 

After the accession of the Whigs to power, 
and while their reforms were in progress, British 
literary judgments about America began to 
reflect a less hostile spirit. Travellers reported 
more that was tolerable in the working of 
democratic customs and institutions, while the 
reviews conceded the existence of a rudimen- 
tary literature in the writings of Irving, Bryant, 
Cooper, Simms, and a few others. Harriet 
Martineau's descriptions and estimates of social 
and intellectual tendencies, while none too 
flattering, differed much in sympathy and ac- 
curacy from most that had preceded. Tocque- 
ville's profound study, appearing in 1835 and 



84 REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 

attracting wide-spread attention at once in 
Great Britain, gave strong support to the revi- 
sion of opinion concerning the American democ- 
racy. On the other side Mrs. Trollope's "Do- 
mestic Life of the Americans," published in 
1832, with its clever and cattish caricatures, 
inflamed the old animosities, which a never- 
ending train of Tory travellers, with far less of 
vivacity and of malice, contributed to keep 
glowing. Finally, it is to be noted that in 1835 
appeared the first important literary produc- 
tion of Richard Cobden, treating the economic 
forces of the United States with much analytic 
power and from a novel point of view. His 
vision of the transforming influence of American 
agriculture and commerce, as well as of manufac- 
tures when once the initial obstacles should be 
overcome, was not confused by suspicions as 
to the religious, moral, or political soundness 
of the people. He was by training one of the 
middle class of English society, a Manchester 
manufacturer, and the lack of culture that 
disturbed so many British observers in America 
did not affect Cobden's perception of the eco- 
nomic strength that was developing. The thesis 
of his essay was that Great Britain's leading 
position among the powers of the world was in 



REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 85 

far greater peril from the economic competition 
of the United States than from the diplomatic 
or military rivalry of any European govern- 
ments. War with the Americans he regarded 
as impossible. In commerce and manufactures, 
however, he believed they were destined to 
take the lead, because of their enormous popu- 
lation and resources. His conclusion was that 
British policy should be directed more with 
reference to American conditions than along 
the ancient lines of the balance of power in Eu- 
rope. The size of Russia's army or of France's 
navy should be of less interest to the govern- 
ment than the number of cotton looms in the 
United States or the statistics of her merchant 
marine. All restrictions that hampered the 
fullest development of British commerce and 
industry must be abolished, and the first of 
these to go must be that main bulwark of the 
aristocratic ascendancy, the Corn Law. 

Thus Cobden made the United States the 
text of his earliest sermon against militarism 
and protectionism. Through the thirty years 
that were to follow of successful agitation and 
of profound influence on English policy, he 
never deviated from cordial appreciation and 
sympathy for the institutions and ideals of the 



86 REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 

American Republic. His influence became im- 
portant, however, only somewhat later than 
the period with which we are now dealing. 
The Anti-Corn-Law League took shape and 
position under his leadership in the late thirties, 
and achieved its crown of success in 1846. It 
is more than a coincidence that this was the 
year that saw the last element of protection 
banished from the tariff law of the United States. 
That part of British public opinion con- 
cerning America which was based upon the 
printed accounts of travel and personal obser- 
vation had no counterpart in American public 
opinion concerning Great Britain. Few Amer- 
icans visited the United Kingdom, and of those 
who did so the number who published their 
impressions was negligible. Some opportunity 
to form judgments of the British individually, if 
not in the mass, was aff^orded by those who came 
and settled in the United States. There was 
in the twenties and thirties a continuous stream 
of immigration from all parts of the United 
Kingdom. The dimensions of the stream can- 
not be known from any trustworthy statistics. 
A sprinkling of English, Scots, and Irish was 
to be found throughout the Union. The Cath- 
olic Irish congregated clannishly in the towns 



REFORM AND DEMOCRACY 87 

and were already exciting the antagonism that 
was to be so serious in the middle of the cen- 
tury. The other elements nowhere became 
numerous or assertive enough to produce a 
perceptible impression. They were mostly arti- 
sans or farmers, Presbyterians or English dis- 
senters, well adapted to conform without fric- 
tion to the social conditions into which they 
came. A large proportion of them had left 
their homes under pressure of social or economic 
discontent and distress, and so far as they gave 
a basis for opinion as to Great Britain they 
confirmed the conviction that the people there 
were a very decent body, shamefully oppressed 
by a haughty group of peers and clergy. This 
opinion derived new support from the fate of 
the Chartist movement in the late thirties. The 
demands of the Chartists were to Americans 
elementary political rights; and the summary 
treatment of the agitation strengthened the 
notion that English liberty under Whig domina- 
tion was as unreal as under the Tories. 



CHAPTER III 

THE ROARING FORTIES: POLK AND 
PALMERSTON 

In 1837 Martin Van Buren succeeded Andrew 
Jackson as President of the United States and 
Victoria succeeded William IV on the throne of 
the United Kingdom. These changes did not 
signify any open reversal of governmental pol- 
icy in either case. Van Buren was Jackson's 
own choice for the succession and was thor- 
oughly identified with the Democratic Party 
that followed Jackson; the Whig cabinet of 
Lord Melbourne continued to direct affairs 
under the Queen as they had done under the 
King. Yet from this date the relations among 
the English-speaking peoples lost the tone of 
cordiality that had characterized them for a 
decade, and entered upon a protracted period 
of hostility and tension, approaching more than 
once to the verge of war. 

First among the conditions that revealed 
the new trend of things was a political ebul- 
lition of serious proportions in Canada. In 

88 



THE ROARING FORTIES 89 

neither of the two provinces bearing this name 
had the development of poHtical and economic 
life since 1815 been calm and satisfactory. 
Party strife was keen on lines that strongly 
suggested the history of the United States just 
before it broke away from Great Britain. The 
chief organs of government in each province were 
a governor appointed by the crown, a legislative 
council likewise appointed, and an assembly 
elected by the people. In both the Canadas the 
central point of constitutional strife was the ten- 
ure and powers of the legislative council. When 
in 1 79 1 the existing province of Quebec was di- 
vided into the two provinces of Lower Canada 
and Upper Canada, it was expected that the 
one should be distinctively the centre of a policy 
adapted to the character and feelings of the 
French population, and the other the particular 
home of the English. In the course of time, 
however, the English element in Lower Canada 
gained largely on the French through immigra- 
tion. In the thirties the ratio of English to 
French was possibly as high as one to three. 
Compared with the conservative, easy-going 
French element the newcomers were radical 
and aggressive and they aroused strong misgivings 
in their compatriots. Political parties tended 



90 THE ROARING FORTIES 

steadily to follow the lines of race. In the 
assembly the numerically stronger French easily 
maintained the ascendancy, but the members of 
the legislative council were selected by the gov- 
ernors chiefly from the English element. Hence 
a persistent demand from the assembly that the 
council should be made elective. On all sub- 
jects of party contest the antagonism between 
the two houses, with the governor sustaining 
the council, was intense, and the hostility was 
but the central point of a far-reaching race 
conflict. 

In Upper Canada there was no difference of 
nationalities to fix the lines of the party con- 
flicts. The issues here turned chiefly on the 
rivalries between the original settlers and the 
later arrivals, the latter being almost entirely 
British, with only a small though active ele- 
ment of immigrants from the United States. 
The Loyalists by whom, at the end of the 
American Revolution, the colony was practically 
created, became by their landed wealth, their 
substantial character, and their political ex- 
perience, as well as by the deliberate recogni- 
tion of the home government, a social and 
political aristocracy in the province. By the 
thirties a relatively narrow group of this class 



THE ROARING FORTIES 91 

had firmly in their control all branches of the 
administration save the assembly. The oppo- 
sition party consisted of the later immigrants, 
whose origin and characteristics were much like 
those of the people who were filling up the 
neighboring borders of the United States. They 
were of the dissenting creeds, for example, while 
the aristocratic party, known commonly as the 
United Empire Loyalists, preserved in general 
a connection with the Church of England. This 
matter of ecclesiastical attachment had no lit- 
tle influence in the critical politics of the time; 
for profound issues of educational and fiscal 
policy turned on the conflicting interests of the 
various sects. 

The aspect of affairs in Lower Canada as- 
sumed a threatening character in 1836. For 
four years prior to that date the assembly had 
refused to vote the money for the judicial and 
administrative service. The British home gov- 
ernment was much embarrassed by the situa- 
tion; for the Whig traditions of the cabinet 
pointed to sympathy with the ostensible prin- 
ciples of the popular party, and both the English 
Radicals and the Irish followers of O'Con- 
nell vigorously sustained the cause of the dis- 
contented French as the cause of liberty and 



92 THE ROARING FORTIES 

democracy against aristocratic privilege. On 
the other hand, the conservative element of the 
Whigs stood out stiffly for the protection of the 
English-speaking minority in Canada, and this 
position was taken also by a special commis- 
sion sent out to examine the situation. Some 
concessions offered by this commission had 
merely the effect, however, of evoking a fresh 
manifestation of recalcitrance by the majority 
in the assembly at Quebec, and the British 
cabinet was forced to appeal to Parliament for 
decisive action. Accordingly, a series of reso- 
lutions was passed in May, 1837, authorizing 
the governor-general to pay the arrears due 
for the public service without waiting for the 
vote of the assembly, declaring it inexpedient 
to make the legislative council elective, and 
denying other important demands of the French 
party. 

The result of this action was insurrection. 
In November, after a period of violent agita- 
tion led by the Frenchman Papineau and a 
few British sympathizers, armed uprisings took 
place in several French communities. There 
was little organization and no discernible co- 
operation in the various movements, and they 
were all quickly suppressed, with trifling blood- 



THE ROARING FORTIES 93 

shed. At the same time the popular party in 
Upper Canada were led to venture on revolt, 
headed by a Scottish editor named Mackenzie. 
An attack was made by a disorderly body of 
the disaffected on Toronto, but it had no more 
effect than the rising in the lower province. 
The insurgent leaders who escaped death and 
capture succeeded in crossing the line into the 
United States. Papineau and Mackenzie were 
both among the number. Many of the rank and 
file of the insurgents also took refuge across the 
border, and found there a measure of sympa- 
thy and support that had serious consequences. 
For a year or more the Canadian frontier was 
harassed by a series of petty but exasperating 
raids organized and directed in the States of 
Vermont, New York, and Michigan. 

The most important of these border forays 
was that conducted from Buffalo as a base in 
December, 1837. A force of several hundred 
men took possession of an island on the Canadian 
side of the international boundary, as a first 
step toward attack on the mainland. Supplies 
for the invaders were drawn from the Amer- 
ican side by means of the small steamer Caro- 
line. Canadian troops, sent to destroy the 
steamer, found her lying at a wharf on the Amer- 



94 THE ROARING FORTIES 

ican shore, cut her loose, and burned her. In 
the shght skirmish that accompanied the sei- 
zure of the vessel an American was slain. No 
further progress was made by the invading 
party on the island, but the destruction of the 
Caroline by British troops in American territory 
caused a fierce wave of indignation to sweep 
through the United States. To this incident, 
more perhaps than to any other cause, was due 
the prolongation of active movements against 
Canada across the border. Popular feeling was, 
of course, no less wrathful on one side of the 
boundary than on the other; for the Canadians 
were deeply irritated at the sympathy and con- 
nivance given by the Americans to the insur- 
gents. 

Diplomacy was prompt to take up the affair 
of the Caroline^ and urgent demands for repa- 
ration for the violation of American territory 
were made by the United States upon the 
British Government. The latter assumed re- 
sponsibility for the act as a regrettable but 
necessary proceeding of defence in time of insur- 
rection and flagrant war, during which the United 
States was a base of supplies for the enemy. 
Negotiations dragged according to their wont 
until a fresh incident gave an exciting impulse 



THE ROARING FORTIES 95 

to their movement. In November, 1840, three 
years after the burning of the Caroline^ Alex- 
ander McLeod, a British subject, was arrested in 
New York State on a charge of arson and mur- 
der in connection with the affair. Indignation 
flamed high in Canada and Great Britain at 
this action, and the authorities at Washington 
were pressed to release McLeod, whose offence, 
if any, had been committed as a soldier under 
orders for which the British Government had 
assumed responsibility. The situation was most 
difficult for the American Department of State; 
for it involved an awkward conflict of jurisdic- 
tion, only too familiar, between the Federal 
Government and the government of New York 
State. The latter, backed by a demonstrative 
popular sentiment, insisted that its courts must 
enforce its criminal law. The right to do so 
could not be questioned by the Federal Govern- 
ment, though the latter alone had to confront 
the threatening demands of Great Britain for 
the release of McLeod. A way out was found 
by Daniel Webster, who became secretary of 
state in March, 1841. He on the one hand 
moderated the urgency of the British demands 
and on the other moved all possible influences 
to insure that McLeod should not be convicted 



96 THE ROARING FORTIES 

by the State court. In October the accused 
man was duly acquitted by a jury, and was 
hastily sent out of the State. 

The period of McLeod's detention was one 
of great bitterness of feehng among all three of 
the English-speaking peoples. While exciting 
conditions of internal politics served to temper 
somewhat the prevailing international antip- 
athies, there was little doubt that the gravest 
results would have followed the conviction and 
punishment of the man. The Canadian revolt 
was indeed only one of several matters that 
combined to produce the tension of the time. 
While the two Canadas were in the throes of 
civil war New Brunswick was on the verge of 
hostilities with the State of Maine over the old 
question of the disputed northeastern boundary. 
On the Gulf of Mexico Texas was fighting for 
independence from Mexico, and was receiving 
from sympathizers in the United States an 
amount and kind of assistance that had not been 
without effect on the expectations of the in- 
surgent Canadians. Finally, on the far-distant 
Pacific coast the late thirties saw the beginning 
of an immigration from the United States into 
the valley of the Columbia River that foretold 
trouble over the Oregon country. The Amer- 



THE ROARING FORTIES 97 

ican people were indeed showing in every direc- 
tion a disposition to burst the territorial bonds 
that confined them, easy as those bonds had 
been. And the far-flung interests of the British 
Empire need no more striking illustration than 
the fact that in whatever direction the Amer- 
icans sought to expand their bounds, whether 
on the Atlantic or on the Pacific, in the Gulf of 
the tropics or under the Arctic circle, they found 
subjects of the Queen, with vested rights, oppos- 
ing the movement. 

The risings in Canada gave a healthy shock 
to British interest, which had been languid in 
respect to the American branch of the empire. 
Parliament, early in 1838, passed an act sus- 
pending the constitution of Lower Canada, and 
in the spring the Earl of Durham was sent out 
as governor-general, armed with dictatorial 
powers. His stay was short, but its influence 
was lasting; for it gave occasion for the famous 
report that furnished the mother country with 
her first clear ideas as to the causes, facts, and 
tendencies of the situation in North America. 
He showed that in every one of the North 
American provinces there was a standing polit- 
ical antagonism between the elected popular 
assembly and the executive oflficers appointed 



98 THE ROARING FORTIES 

by the crown — such antagonism as had pro- 
duced the revolution of 1688 in England and 
that of 1776 in America. This condition, dan- 
gerous everywhere, became disastrous in Lower 
Canada, where it brought to a head the race 
animosity that was the basis of all the trouble 
there. The general remedy for the evils con- 
cerned, in Lord Durham's opinion, was the in- 
troduction of responsible government, that is, 
responsibility of the executive to the repre- 
sentatives of the people in the assembly. As 
to the Canadas, his Lordship saw no hope of 
stability and peace save through the union of 
the two provinces under a single legislature and 
executive. By such a system the French ele- 
ment would be deprived of the hope of an inde- 
pendent, or at least autonomous, government, 
and the English-speaking people would be as- 
sured of the political predominance to which they 
were entitled by their numerical, economic, and 
intellectual superiority. 

Lord Durham's outspoken project for sub- 
merging the French in Canada was equalled in 
candor by his discussion of the relations of the 
British provinces with the United States. The 
enterprise and material prosperity on the re- 
publican side of the boundary, as compared with 



THE ROARING FORTIES 99 

conditions on the British side, he set forth in 
terms that were bitterly resented, especially in 
Upper Canada. He appraised in a spirit of ju- 
dicial detachment the sympathy and support 
given by the people of the United States to the 
Canadian malcontents, and the expectations of 
the latter as to the possibilities of escape from 
British rule by incorporation into the republic. 
He estimated with care the strength of the 
traditional antipathy with which the aristo- 
cratic dominant class in Upper Canada regarded 
the democracy across the border. As against 
the force of this feeling he considered the influ- 
ence that contiguity, with identity of problems 
and interests, would exert for the promotion 
of respect and amity. The general deduction 
from his calculation was that, in default of a 
very wise and considerate policy on the part 
of the home government, union with the United 
States might become a popular demand among 
both the French and the English elements in 
the Canadas. 

The importance of Lord Durham's discussion 
of this point was conspicuous in view of ideas 
that were freely broached by British politi- 
cians of prominence at this time. A calculus 
of the value of colonies and dependencies was 



loo THE ROARING FORTIES 

becoming a rather common feature of debate. 
Ultra Radicals like Roebuck and Hume, and 
less violent ones like Brougham, contended that 
the connection of the Canadas with Great 
Britain either already was, or in the near fu- 
ture would be, irrational and adverse to the 
true interests of both parties. Cobden and his 
anti-Corn-Law followers assailed, in the name of 
economic and political liberty, the system under 
which, for the sake of imperial glory, the nat- 
ural law of freedom in trade and navigation 
was set at naught. Lord Durham himself had 
been identified with the Radicals, but on the 
question of colonies he did not join the ultras. 
The burden of his contention in his great report 
was, that the North American provinces should 
be^ so administered as to grow into a unified 
nationality, attached to the British Empire, 
and sharing by give and take in the civilization 
and progress of which that empire was the 
home. 

Under an act of Parliament that went Into 
effect in 1841 a new constitution for Canada 
became operative. It joined the two provinces 
in a legislative union, with many features that 
Lord Durham had recommended. The new 
system did not bring at once the tranquillity 



THE ROARING FORTIES loi 

that had been hoped for. It included, however, 
provisions through which the popular element 
in the legislature could grow in relative influence, 
and it became thus instrumental in the develop- 
ment of responsible government and an increas- 
ing autonomy. 

Just at the time when the popular excitement 
along the border was at its height in connection 
with the insurrection in Canada, it was unfor- 
tunate, but scarcely surprising, that the friction 
over the unsettled boundary of Maine and New 
Brunswick should have become acute. The 
King of the Netherlands had failed, as we have 
seen, to find any geographical facts that he 
would judicially warrant to embody the line 
described in the treaty of 1783. After the fail- 
ure of this arbitration, desultory negotiations 
were carried on by the two governments, but 
with little progress toward agreement; so that 
in 1838 the "northwest angle of Nova Scotia" 
and the "highlands" were eluding the diplomats 
and surveyors as successfully as at any time 
during the previous half-century. It had been 
informally agreed by the two governments that 
neither should seek to strengthen its position 
in the disputed territory pending the determina- 
tion of the boundary. Despite this agreement 



102 THE ROARING FORTIES 

vexatious incidents occurred from time to time. 
The authorities of Maine and New Brunswick, 
while professing to conform with exactness to 
the agreement not to strengthen their respect- 
ive positions, were at no less pains to see that 
their positions were not weakened. Settlers, 
both British and American, and for the most 
part of no very desirable character, drifted into 
the region; local officials of the neighboring 
jurisdictions extended their activities and ar- 
rested each other as intruders; lumbermen, 
with or without color of right, plied their enter- 
prise in the rich forests of the no-man's-land. 
In the summer of 1838 an unusually large force 
of British lumbermen carried on extensive 
operations on the Aroostook River. Ordered 
off by an American official, they refused to go, 
and assembled in considerable numbers to main- 
tain their position by force. The government of 
Maine thereupon sent a strong body of militia 
to enforce its authority, and the government 
of New Brunswick responded by procuring the 
despatch of a detachment of British regulars 
to the neighborhood. 

No bloodshed resulted from this threatening 
situation. Popular and official excitement, of 
course, ran high along the border, and contrib- 



THE ROARING FORTIES 103 

uted to increase the wide-spread ill feeling al- 
ready caused by the incidents of the rebellion 
in Canada. The British and American foreign 
offices quickly took charge of the affair and 
soothed the inflamed susceptibilities of Maine 
and New Brunswick. President Van Buren felt 
obliged to rebuke the rather high-handed way 
in which the governor of Maine had begun to 
make war on the British Empire. It was clear 
in this matter, however, as became even clearer 
a little later in the case of McLeod, that the 
constitutional partition of authority between 
the States and the Federal Government in the 
American system must often cause great em- 
barrassment to the United States in its rela- 
tions with foreign powers. 

The most important practical result of this 
so-called "Aroostook war" was the impulse it 
gave to serious efforts toward the settlement of 
the boundary. Negotiations had lagged in a 
spiritless way ever since the failure of the arbi- 
tration. Maine was justified at least in her 
complaints on this score. The administrations 
of Jackson and Van Buren on the one side, and 
the cabinet of the Melbourne Whigs on the 
other, found subjects much more to their taste 
than the exhausted and exhausting question as 



104 THE ROARING FORTIES 

to where the northwest angle of eighteenth- 
century Nova Scotia was situated. The gov- 
ernor of Maine, with his mihtia, stirred up the 
diplomats as effectually as he did the lumber- 
men. Palmerston, the British foreign secre- 
tary, and Forsyth, the American secretary of 
state, after some despatches manifesting more 
acerbity than had characterized the correspond- 
ence since Canning's time, agreed in a recog- 
nition of each other's highly correct and amicable 
intentions, and proceeded to institute a new 
series of surveys and a new set of commis- 
sioners to guess out the location of the elusive 
angle and highlands. For three years, 1839-42, 
there was great activity in the search for the 
boundary and vast ingenuity was displayed in 
the construction of new theories about the mean- 
ing of the treaty and the topography of the dis- 
puted region. The country was so covered with 
hills that a surveyor who knew it well could 
construct a chain of highlands in nearly any 
direction that suited his taste or his instruc- 
tions, and was as free to indulge his fancy 
about the boundary as were the negotiators 
in 1783, who knew nothing whatever about the 
facts. 

In 1 841 there was a change of administration 



THE ROARING FORTIES 105 

in both Great Britain and the United States. 
At Washington in March the American Whigs 
assumed control of the government; at London 
in September the British Whigs fell from power. 
Daniel Webster became American secretary of 
state, and Lord Aberdeen became foreign sec- 
retary in place of Palmerston. The relations 
of the English-speaking peoples with one an- 
other could scarcely have been more unpleasant 
than they were at the time of these changes. 
The McLeod incident, with the other friction 
due to the Canadian insurrection, was at the 
most critical stage, and the boundary dispute 
was as far as ever from settlement. Added to 
these came a fresh revival of the old and ex- 
tremely inflammatory issue about the right of 
search. Slave-traders of various nationalities 
were freely using the American flag to protect 
themselves, and British cruisers on the African 
coast, in trying to stop the trade, now and then 
visited and examined a vessel whose right to 
carry the American flag was beyond question. 
The complaints of merchants whose business 
was thus interfered with led to energetic pro- 
tests to the British Government, and one of the 
last acts of Palmerston before his retirement 
from the Foreign Office was to send in reply to 



io6 THE ROARING FORTIES 

such a protest a despatch that raspingly refused 
to concede the American demand. 

With Aberdeen at the Foreign Office the tone 
of the correspondence between the two govern- 
ments underwent a notable change. Webster, 
after seeing the McLeod affair peacefully set- 
tled, went earnestly to work on the boundary 
question. His plan was to drop all the great 
mass of surveyors* and historians' data, to give 
up trying to find out the meaning of the treaty, 
and to reach an agreement by direct negotia- 
tion on a conventional line. It was deemed 
necessary first to obtain the assent of Maine 
and of Massachusetts (within whose jurisdic- 
tion Maine was originally included) to this 
method of settlement. Though the govern- 
ment of Maine had declared in the most formal 
way that it would never consent, it consented, 
and Massachusetts raised no difficulties. The 
British Government showed its sense of the im- 
portance of the whole situation by announcing 
that it would send a special envoy to deal with 
the pending questions, and manifested its ami- 
cable spirit by designating for the mission 
Alexander Baring, Lord Ashburton, whose fit- 
ness was signified equally by his distinguished 
public services in England and his well-known 



THE ROARING FORTIES 107 

cordiality toward the United States. Ash- 
burton reached Washington in April, 1842, and 
on the 9th of August the famous Webster- 
Ashburton treaty was signed. It was savagely 
attacked in the British provinces, in Great Brit- 
ain itself, and in the United States. These 
attacks were for the most part, however, mere 
ebullitions of partisan spite or of that queer 
conception of public duty which requires fault 
to be found with every achievement of the 
administration for the time being. 

So far as it went the Webster-Ashburton 
Treaty was an extremely important step in 
the development of pacific relations among the 
English-speaking peoples. The convention it- 
self provided definitely a settlement of all open 
questions about the boundary from the Atlantic 
Ocean to the Rocky Mountains; it established 
an unobjectionable, if not supremely efficient, 
system of co-operation for the suppression of 
the slave-trade; and it embodied an agreement 
for the extradition of criminals that was urgently 
demanded by the disturbed conditions along 
the Canadian frontier. In the published corre- 
spondence between the negotiators were incor- 
porated a satisfactory expression of regret by 
Great Britain for the violation of American ter- 



io8 THE ROARING FORTIES 

ritory in the affair of the Caroline, and an ex- 
change of views that was interpreted by Web- 
ster as a substantial abandonment of the ancient 
claim to the right of search and impressment. 
In regard to the case of McLeod, Webster re- 
newed the admission by the United States of 
the British contention that a private citizen 
could not be punished for an act for which his 
government assumed the responsibility, but 
amicably forbore to point out, as his predeces- 
sor had done, the awkward position in which 
the British Government would be put by this 
contention in connection with certain incidents 
of Palmerston's aggressive policy in the af- 
fairs of continental Europe. The forbearance of 
Webster in this matter was typical of the gen- 
eral tone of the correspondence and of the whole 
negotiation. A spirit of friendliness and cour- 
tesy was manifested at every stage, and an 
almost ostentatious avoidance of ideas or ex- 
pressions that could irritate. Whatever of 
soothing effect was produced by the mission of 
Lord Ashburton was probably due as much to 
this characteristic of the negotiations as to the 
treaty itself. 

The boundary fixed by the treaty gave to 
Maine a little more than half of the area claimed 



THE ROARING FORTIES 109 

by her, and a little less than what was assigned 
to her by the rejected arbitration of the King 
of the Netherlands. As a solace she received 
from the United States the sum of $150,000, 
a like sum going to Massachusetts. The line 
dividing Canada from Vermont and New York, 
which, as we have seen, had been erroneously 
run by the surveyors to the substantial advan- 
tage of the United States, was fixed by the 
treaty in accordance with the now long-estab- 
lished error. 

The consent of Maine to the negotiation of 
a conventional line was secured largely through 
means that, when later disclosed, became the 
focus of a heated controversy. Just when 
Webster was getting his plans for the negotia- 
tion under headway his attention was called 
to a map recently discovered in the French 
archives which might be the one which Frank- 
lin was known to have sent to Vergennes in 
1782 with the bounds of the United States, as 
agreed upon by the negotiators of the treaty of 
peace, marked upon it by a strong red line. 
The new-found map bore no evidence as to its 
identity, but the boundary of the United States 
was marked on it with a strong red line, and the 
line in the region of Maine followed very closely 



no THE ROARING FORTIES 

that claimed by the British as designated by 
the treaty of 1783. Webster showed a copy of 
this map to the governor of Maine, suggesting 
how awkward it would be to go into a new arbi- 
tration with the possibility that the map might 
come before the arbiter. Maine gave in her 
adhesion to the project of a conventional line. 
Webster refrained from showing the red-line 
map to Lord Ashburton, and further directed 
Everett, the minister at London, to abandon all 
searching for maps that might have been used 
in the negotiations of 1782-3. 

Under all the circumstances, this abstention 
from further map-hunting was a dictate of 
elementary prudence. It was made ridiculous 
by what became known a little later. In the 
British Museum lay the actual map used in 
the negotiations of 1782 by Oswald, one of the 
British commissioners, and on this map the 
boundary agreed to was marked by a line that 
followed very closely what was claimed by the 
United States. If Everett had continued his 
search and happened upon this map, Webster's 
way with Great Britain, if not with Maine, 
would have been materially smoothed. 

Neither the red-line map nor Oswald's map 
came forth from retirement till Webster and 



THE ROARING FORTIES in 

Ashburton had concluded their treaty. Then, 
in connection with the debate in the Senate on 
the ratification, the fact of the discovery in 
Paris became public, and from this followed the 
disclosure of Oswald's map, which had been 
removed to the British Foreign Office. The 
opponents of the treaty found in these incidents 
good material for their attacks upon it. Web- 
ster was accused of trickery, and Ashburton of 
imbecility. The whimsical fortune that gave 
to each party exclusive control of evidence 
strongly sustaining its adversary made the sit- 
uation most interesting, and promoted a dili- 
gent re-examination of the boundary issue on 
its merits. A furious cartographic controversy 
developed, in official and non-official circles. 
Maps, rumors of maps, traditions of maps, bear- 
ing on the line described in the treaty of 1783, 
came forth in impressive but perplexing num- 
bers. Long before the debate assumed its 
greatest dimensions, however, the treaty of 1842 
was duly ratified. To the layman the argu- 
ments of the cartographic and historical ex- 
perts were reciprocally annihilating, and the 
wisdom of the negotiators in discarding the whole 
method was confirmed. All of ill feeling from 
the treaty that survived into later years was 



H2 THE ROARING FORTIES 

that on the part of the British-Americans, 
who were debarred by the Webster-Ashburton 
boundary from the most direct and practicable 
Kne of communication between HaHfax and 
Quebec. They long continued to feel that their 
interests and plain rights had been sacrificed 
to the mother-country's exaggerated fear of a 
breach with the United States. 

The provisions of the treaty touching the 
slave-trade avoided all reference to the right 
of search. It was agreed that each govern- 
ment should maintain on the coast of Africa 
a considerable naval force to apply its own laws 
against the trade. The two forces were to 
work in co-operation with each other for the 
common end, under orders from their respect- 
ive governments adapted to make this co-opera- 
tion most effective. 

This article was the best that could be de- 
vised to end the dangerous controversies that 
arose from time to time over the activities of 
the British cruisers on the African coast. It 
insured a more positive and definite participa- 
tion by the United States in the suppression of 
the slave-trade, and at the same time, by pro- 
viding for the presence of an American squad- 
ron in the most troublesome neighborhood, gave 



THE ROARING FORTIES 113 

some guarantee that slavers who misused the 
flag and traders who lawfully used it should be 
judged by its natural protectors rather than by 
the officers of a foreign power. The article in 
this shape was designed to leave wholly un- 
touched the controversy over the right of search, 
and merely to reduce the frequency of the 
Incidents that might raise anew that contro- 
versy. 

At this date the discussion of the right of 
search by the publicists, official and unofficial, 
had assumed new phases in connection with the 
matter of the slave-trade. How, It was asked, 
could the nefarious traffic ever be interfered 
with, if a vessel loaded with slaves could escape 
examination by the simple expedient of running 
up a flag other than that of the cruiser that 
wished to examine her.? There must be at 
least such examination as will determine whether 
the suspected ship has a right to the colors 
which she displays. Irrespective, thus, of any 
serious search, there must be a right of visitation 
as to a merchantman concerning which there 
is any ground for suspicion. 

Not so, was the reply. Visitation would be 
futile without such a degree of examination as 
would constitute all that is involved in the 



'I 



114 THE ROARING FORTIES 

practice of search. The claim of the lesser 
right is no more tenable in law and reason than 
the ancient pretension to the greater. The 
utmost that can be conceded is the right of 
approach. A cruiser may regard from a respect- 
ful distance and in a peaceful manner a ship 
flying an innocent flag, but any attempt by 
force to stop such a ship or to interfere with her 
course is a violation of the flag and of that free- 
dom of the seas on which the civilization and 
progress of mankind so closely depend. 

But what if the suspected vessel is a pirate? 
Shall a pirate be allowed to roam the seas at 
will, guaranteed against interference by the 
possession of a few lockers full of flags that she 
has taken from the victims of her lawlessness.? 
Far from it, was the answer. A pirate has been 
from time immemorial, under the law of nations, 
hostis humani generis — at war with all mankind. 
No one pretends that the right of search is not 
possessed by a belligerent in time of war, as a 
reasonable precaution against the rendering of 
aid to the enemy. Only in time of peace is it 
wholly without justification. But as to pirates 
there is never a time of peace. War is perma- 
nent and coextensive with the human race. 
Therefore, as to pirates the right of search on 



THE ROARING FORTIES 115 

the high seas belongs to the ships of all na- 
tions at all times. 

These various arguments were iterated and 
reiterated, amplified and fortified with the in- 
genuity and historical learning that the experts 
in diplomacy and international law were readily 
able to supply. The practical outcome so far 
as concerned Great Britain and America was 
determined, however, by popular feelings that 
were independent of the reasoning on abstract 
principles. In the United Kingdom the hu- 
manitarian sentiment against the slave-trade 
pervaded all classes and demanded insistently 
that the great naval power of the government 
should be freely used for the suppression of the 
evil. In the United States the memory of con- 
ditions during the Napoleonic wars was un- 
ceasingly active and prohibited any semblance 
of recognition to the exercise of British juris- 
diction for any purpose on American vessels 
on the high seas. There was a wide-spread 
belief in the United States that the British 
enthusiasm for the suppression of the slave- 
trade covered a greater enthusiasm for main- 
taining the right of search as the unmistakable 
token of her naval supremacy. Nor was this 
belief without foundation; for in some centres 



ii6 THE ROARING FORTIES 

of surviving high Toryism the sufferings of the 
Africans were notoriously of little concern in 
comparison with the maintenance intact of 
British rule on the seas as against the aspira- 
tions of the upstart republic of the West. On 
the other hand, there was a feeling among the 
liberals in England that the obstinate refusal 
of the Americans to join with whole soul in the 
operations against the slavers was dictated less 
by fears and scruples about the right of search 
than by unavowed indifference to the existence 
of the traffic. And this again was not without 
foundation; for the trend of events during the 
past ten years in relation to slavery had markedly 
strengthened a feeling in the South that war 
on the slave-trade was too closely associated 
with abolitionism to be wholly free from peril 
to the institutions of the section. 

In the negotiations of 1842 Webster secured 
an opportunity to put his government's views 
correctly on the record, by asking that the right 
of search in connection with impressment, rather 
than with the slave-trade, be taken up for dis- 
cussion. Ashburton declared that his instruc- 
tions did not permit him to enter upon that 
subject. Webster made use of the occasion to 
enlarge with eloquence and force upon the views 



THE ROARING FORTIES 117 

of his government. The most significant fea- 
ture of his plea was probably not his solemn 
declaration that the United States would no 
longer permit the impressment of seamen from 
American vessels, but the attention that he 
gave to the remarkable change of conditions 
since the practice was last resorted to. He ad- 
verted to the extraordinary proportions at- 
tained by immigration from the British Isles, 
much of it encouraged by the British Govern- 
ment, and he pointed out the disastrous conse- 
quences that would ensue if, in time of future 
war, any attempt should be made to assert the 
doctrine of indefeasible allegiance among these 
swarming myriads and to force them into the 
service of the government that had encouraged 
them to leave its soil. 

Ashburton's answer was of the soft species 
that turneth away wrath. He declined to enter 
into argument and merely deprecated the dis- 
cussion of a topic that was so full of difficulty 
in the abstract and so happily remote from any 
practical importance. He freely admitted, how- 
ever, that a serious question "has existed, from 
practices formerly attending the mode of man- 
ning the Biitish navy in times of war.'* This 
form of expression indicated a belief that im- 
pressment was a matter of the past. 



ii8 THE ROARING FORTIES 

It is not unlikely that Webster, when inject- 
ing the discussion of impressment into the cor- 
respondence with Ashburton, was conscious of 
the influence it might have as a set-off against 
the attacks of the anti-slavery agitators upon 
the United States. In America, at least, forced 
service in the navy was regarded as not much 
different in principle from forced service in the 
cotton-field. So long as the British Govern- 
ment insisted on the right to drag freemen away 
into such servitude, its interest in mitigating 
the woes of the African slave savored of hypoc- 
risy. The utility, if not the validity, of this 
kind of reasoning was rendered obvious by an 
incident that threatened serious consequences 
just at the time of the Webster-Ashburton ne- 
gotiations. 

In November, 1841, the brig Creole was 
bound from Hampton Roads to New Orleans 
with a few passengers and 135 slaves on board. 
On the way the slaves rose in revolt, slew one 
of the passengers, wounded many of the crew, 
and took the vessel into the British port of 
Nassau, in the Bahamas, where the local au- 
thorities, after arresting those of the slaves who 
were implicated in the mutiny, forcibly took the 
rest from the ship and set them free. This 



THE ROARING FORTIES 119 

action caused intense exasperation in the United 
States, especially in the South. The feeling 
was not softened by the fact that Northern 
abolitionists rapturously applauded the free- 
ing of the slaves. The case was indeed only 
the culmination of a series in which, since the 
emancipation of the blacks in the West Indies, 
the Bahama officials had rigorously applied the 
principle of English law that a slave on enter- 
ing the jurisdiction of Great Britain became 
ipso facto free. Webster felt obliged to inject 
this matter also into the correspondence with 
Lord Ashburton, contending that under the 
law of nations jurisdiction over a foreign ship 
brought into a port against its will did not 
extend to the divesting of property rights on 
board, and that on the general principles of 
international comity rigorous procedure under 
such circumstances as those that brought the 
Creole into port was barbarous, and destructive 
to all hope of amicable relations. Here again 
Ashburton disclaimed authority to go at large 
into the question, but engaged that the govern- 
ors of the British colonies near the slave States 
should be cautioned against ** officious interfer- 
ence with American vessels driven by accident 
or by violence into those ports." 



120 THE ROARING FORTIES 

The pacific adjustment of the boundary on 
the northeastern border of the United States 
was the most decisive and satisfactory feature 
of the treaty. There had been high hopes in 
British governmental circles that all the old 
questions at issue between the two nations 
would be set at rest. Not only did these hopes 
fail, but almost before the ink was dry on the 
treaty the unsettled issues took on a threaten- 
ing aspect. American aspirations were directed 
with new earnestness to territorial expansion 
on the Gulf of Mexico and on the Pacific 
Ocean. British interests were supposed to re- 
quire that such expansion should be thwarted. 
Out of this situation arose serious ill feeling, 
both governmental and popular, in relation to 
Texas, Oregon, and California. 

Texas was in 1842 an independent republic, 
recognized as such by the leading powers of the 
world, though not by Mexico. British interests 
in Mexico were very large, chiefly through the 
extensive holdings of Mexican bonds in Great 
Britain. Texas freed herself from Mexican rule 
in the later thirties, largely through the aid 
given by immigrants and adventurers from the 
United States. The British Government at first 
used its influence to bring about the reunion 



THE ROARING FORTIES I2i 

of the revolted state to Mexico. In 1839, how- 
ever, the poUcy was changed, and systematic 
pressure was brought to bear to induce Mexico 
to recognize the independence of Texas. Palm- 
erston, then at the British Foreign Office, was 
convinced that the Texans were too strong to 
be reconquered, and that further efforts in that 
direction would only bring the Americans in 
overwhelming numbers to the aid of Texas, with 
annexation to the United States as the inev- 
itable result. For Mexican welfare it was im- 
portant, he argued, that there should be a 
strong buffer state to hold the ever-aggres- 
sive Americans in check. For British interests 
a great cotton-growing community, competing 
with the United States, promised signal advan- 
tages in commerce and industry. This reason- 
ing failed to win Mexico, and Great Britain, 
abandoning the hope of harmony with the 
Mexican Government, conceded the long-with- 
held recognition of Texan independence. 

The treaties that embodied this recognition 
were ratified only in the middle of 1842. One 
of them was directed to the suppression of the 
slave-tr.ade through the reciprocal grant of the 
right of search. The first diplomatic represent- 
ative sent by Great Britain to Texas was an 



122 THE ROARING FORTIES 

ardent abolitionist, who began unofficial ef- 
forts to bring about the emancipation of the 
slaves in Texas through money loaned by Great 
Britain. Thus there entered into the situation 
an influence that was destined to have most 
important consequences. In the course of 1843 
Lord Aberdeen committed his government def- 
initely to the policy of promoting abolition 
in Texas. Reports of this proceeding, however 
inaccurate and distorted, produced an imme- 
diate commotion in the United States. That 
Great Britain should be taking any active in- 
terest whatever in Texan affairs, was regarded 
all over the land as disquieting; that she should 
be seeking to abolitionize Texas, was regarded by 
the slave States as a malicious attack on their 
welfare. The long-dormant project of annexa- 
tion was taken up and pressed with energy as 
the only sure way of counteracting the insidious 
activity of the British. Not that Aberdeen's 
policy was the sole basis of the new agitation; 
but it played an important part in the affair 
and revealed again the peculiar sensitiveness of 
the Americans in relation to Great Britain. 

Advances to Texas in respect to annexation 
were made by the United States in the autumn 
of 1843, and a treaty was concluded in April of 



THE ROARING FORTIES 123 

1844. Two months later the treaty, after a 
fierce struggle, was rejected by the American 
Senate. During this whole period the British 
Government, as is known perfectly now but was 
only a matter of strong suspicion at the time, 
labored earnestly to thwart annexation. Aber- 
deen sought the support of France and proposed 
to Mexico that, if she would recognize the inde- 
pendence of Texas, Great Britain and France 
should jointly guarantee the boundaries of both 
Mexico and Texas against the United States. 
This drastic project was eventually dropped 
because France declined to face a war with the 
United States, and because the British and 
French ministers at Washington agreed in re- 
porting that the immediate result, if the plan 
should become known, would be the carrying 
out of annexation at all hazards by the United 
States. In the presidential campaign of 1844 
a demand for annexation was formally incor- 
porated into the platform of the Democratic 
Party, and that party triumphed in the election. 
British "interference" in American affairs was 
a conspicuous theme of Democratic denuncia- 
tion during the heat of the canvass, and the 
suspicions, half-truths, and downright fabrica- 
tions that always play so large a part on such 



124 THE ROARING FORTIES 

occasions evoked abundant manifestations of 
anti-British feeling among the people. Under 
the impulse of the Democratic victory President 
Tyler pressed upon Congress a plan for the 
annexation of Texas by legislative act rather 
than by treaty, and the plan was adopted in 
the ensuing session and put in operation by 
Tyler before the inauguration of the newly 
elected President, Polk. The formal consum- 
mation of the plan was effected by the latter 
late in 1845. Aberdeen's efforts to thwart it 
did not cease till the decisive step toward enter- 
ing the Union was definitely taken by Texas 
itself. 

Meanwhile a more open and dangerous con- 
troversy with the United States had developed 
in relation to the interests of the two nations 
in the Oregon country. The region concerned 
lay between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky 
Mountains and between the parallels of 42° 
and 54° 40' north latitude. Under the treaties 
of 181 8 and 1827, as we have seen, the boundary 
in this region was left undetermined, and the 
country was left *'free and open ... to the 
vessels, citizens and subjects of the two Powers.'* 
The object of this provision was to permit the 
natural course of settlement to proceed without 



THE ROARING FORTIES 125 

interference and furnish some indication of a 
desirable boundary. British occupation was 
carried out by the Hudson's Bay Company, 
which established a chain of posts along the 
Columbia River from the ocean to the moun- 
tains, with other posts to the northward and 
the southward. This famous company absorbed 
in 1 82 1 its rival, the Northwest Company, of 
Montreal, and thereafter possessed a monopoly 
of all trade throughout British America to the 
west and north of Canada. Of government for 
this vast territory there was none save that fur- 
nished by the agents of the company. As a 
commercial enterprise the company was suc- 
cessful. As a promoter of colonization it was 
worse than useless. Its interest lay obviously 
in maintaining the conditions that produced 
the most furs; settlements and civilization were 
not among such conditions. Hence all the 
reports and all the influence of the great com- 
pany were strongly adverse to any influx of 
settlers either overland from the provinces or 
by way of the ocean. 

American occupation of the Oregon territory 
began with the establishment of Astoria as a 
fur-trading post at the mouth of the Columbia 
just before the War of 18 12. Seized by the 



126 THE ROARING FORTIES 

British during the war, it was restored in ac- 
cordance with the terms of peace, but was 
ultimately abandoned by the American traders. 
During the twenties the fur-trade that centred 
in Saint Louis extended its operations on a 
large scale beyond the Rocky Mountains. The 
South Pass, through which the first transconti- 
nental railway was destined to cross the moun- 
tains, was discovered and was made the high- 
way for a well-organized traffic with the Indians 
and trappers in the extreme southeastern part 
of the Oregon territory. From the South Pass 
access to the head-waters of the Columbia River 
was, by the standards of that vast wilderness, 
short and easy. Hence communication with 
the Hudson's Bay Company's posts soon be- 
came frequent, and the famous Oregon Trail 
entered into history. 

Early in the thirties futile schemes for emi- 
gration to Oregon were essayed by restless and 
visionary New Englanders. Somewhat later a 
definite impulse to interest in the region was 
given by the missionary spirit of the Methodists 
and Presbyterians. Parties sent out under the 
auspices of these sects in 1834 and succeeding 
years crossed the plains and the mountains in 
company with the fur-traders who set out in 



THE ROARING FORTIES 127 

well-organized caravans from Saint Louis every 
spring. The purpose of the missionaries was 
to Christianize and civilize the Indians, but the 
sites selected for the stations were naturally- 
determined by the requirements of the white 
man's life. The valleys of the Columbia and 
its tributaries were found to abound in rich 
agricultural lands. The climate was mild and 
the rainfall copious. Reports of the attractive- 
ness of the region circulated through the United 
States, together with highly colored descriptions 
of the establishments by which the Hudson's 
Bay Company was maintaining and consol- 
idating the British occupation. As a conse- 
quence demands began to be heard, in Congress 
and out, for action by the government for the 
encouragement and protection of an American 
occupation. Before anything was done, how- 
ever, emigration from the settled States assumed 
large proportions. From 1841 every spring saw 
a numerous company start from western Mis- 
souri on the long journey to Oregon, which they 
were lucky to reach six months later. Arrived 
in the promised land, they found no semblance 
of political organization or authority save where 
the British flag waved over the posts of the Hud- 
son's Bay Company. 



128 THE ROARING FORTIES 

Resentment at such a condition of affairs 
was expressed with steadily increasing volume 
throughout the United States, but especially 
in the West, and was accompanied by shrill 
demands that the American claim to the whole 
of the Oregon territory should be effectively 
asserted. In the presidential campaign of 1844 
the Democrats united this demand with that 
for the annexation of Texas. " Fifty-four forty 
or fight" was the alliterative slogan that em- 
bodied the jingoistic feeling as to Oregon. The 
Democratic convention recorded in the party 
platform its conviction "that our title to the 
whole of the territory of Oregon is clear and 
unquestionable; that no portion of the same 
ought to be ceded to England or any other 
power." With all due allowance for the insin- 
cerities and bluster of campaign declamation, 
the election of Polk on such a platform, together 
with the popular feeling exhibited during the 
canvass, gave strong evidence that the time 
was at hand for a definitive settlement of the 
long-standing question. The inaugural address 
of the new President, in March, 1845, made the 
matter perfectly clear. Polk declared it his duty 
to ** assert and maintain by all constitutional 
means the right of the United States to that 



THE ROARING FORTIES 129 

portion of our territory which lies beyond the 
Rocky Mountains." This declaration attracted 
much attention in Great Britain, where it was 
regarded as a belHcose claim to the whole 
of Oregon. Sir Robert Peel, the prime min- 
ister, as well as the leader of the opposition and 
other political chieftains, felt called upon to 
make public counter-declarations that British 
claims to the region would be sustained at all 
hazards. 

While this little flurry of long-range defiance 
was in progress, with the embellishments that 
the newspapers were able to add, a more sig- 
nificant element in the general situation showed 
itself in the unusually large numbers that as- 
sembled in western Missouri to join the annual 
trek over the Oregon Trail. The character of 
these emigrants was as a whole excellent, and 
their purpose of making homes for themselves 
in the distant territory was guaranteed by the 
large numbers of women and children in every 
party. To look after the interests of these peo- 
ple, both on their long progress across the 
plains and mountains and in their new homes, 
was a most obvious duty of a government that 
made any pretensions to efficiency. 

Polk's secretary of state, Buchanan, took up 



ijo THE ROARING FORTIES 

the Oregon question with Pakenham, the Brit- 
ish minister at Washington, in the summer of 
1845. Negotiations as to the northwestern 
boundary of the United States had been carried 
on at intervals ever since the purchase of the 
Louisiana territory in 1803 gave the United 
States a definite interest in the region. Diplo- 
macy had exhausted all the arguments based on 
discovery, exploration, treaty, and occupation, 
without leaving any possibility that either the 
British or the American Government could ex- 
clude the other entirely from the tract in dis- 
pute. Division of the territory had been pro- 
posed by both sides, the Americans offering the 
extension of the parallel of forty-nine degrees 
from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, the 
British insisting on the Columbia River from 
the point at which its northern branch was 
intersected by the same parallel. Near the 
close of Tyler's administration an oflfer of arbi- 
tration by the British was declined. When 
Buchanan resumed negotiations in July, 1845, 
he again offered forty-nine degrees to the Pacific, 
explaining that while President Polk believed 
the American claim to the whole region was 
valid, he felt precluded by the acts of his prede- 
cessors from insisting on it without first trying 



THE ROARING FORTIES 131 

what they had been willing to concede. Pak- 
enham here made a grave tactical error. With- 
out consulting his government he rejected the 
proposal, in terms so peremptory and ill-advised 
as to give great offence to the President. Polk 
promptly revealed a spirit that he had not been 
supposed to possess. Against the almost tearful 
protests of the timid Buchanan he practically 
broke off negotiations by directing the secretary 
to withdraw his offer and to refrain from all 
further consideration of the question until some 
definite proposal should be received from Great 
Britain. This position the President main- 
tained unflinchingly despite repeated efforts of 
Pakenham to induce a renewal of the offer; for 
Lord Aberdeen had disapproved of his course 
in rejecting it, and Pakenham was left in a very 
uncomfortable position. 

In his message to Congress in December, 1845, 
Polk confirmed his uncompromising attitude by 
revealing the whole situation, claiming that the 
conciliatory policy of the United States had been 
flouted by Great Britain, and calling upon Con- 
gress for legislation to sustain the right to all 
Oregon, and to protect its citizens who should 
settle therein. As against the policy of Great 
Britain he propounded two dogmas that must 



132 THE ROARING FORTIES 

prevail in relation to America: first, that there 
must be no interference by European powers 
with the independent action of the nations on 
this continent; second, that no new colony shall 
be established by any European power in North 
America. These principles he considered to be 
implicit in the celebrated dicta of President 
Monroe twenty-two years earlier, which he 
cited and reaffirmed. Polk's immediate appli- 
cation of his principles was, of course, to Texas 
and Oregon. If any portion of the people of 
this continent should wish to join with the 
United States, no European power shall inter- 
fere to prevent the union; further, "no future 
European colony or dominion shall, with our 
consent, be planted or established on any part 
of the North American continent." As the first 
of these expressions referred unmistakably to 
Aberdeen's diplomatic activities in Texas, so 
the second, through the indefinite extension of 
Monroe's doctrine implied in the words I have 
italicized, referred no less clearly to Oregon. 

This belligerent pronouncement of Polk was 
naturally the prelude to a long season of war- 
like feeling and hostile recrimination on both 
sides of the Atlantic. As the treaty of 1827 
provided for the termination of the joint occu- 



II 



THE ROARING FORTIES 133 

pation of Oregon by one year's notice from either 
government, Polk asked Congress for authority 
to give the necessary notice. After debates 
lasting all through the winter, the authority was 
given, and Great Britain was duly notified in 
April of 1846. Long before this date, however, 
a way had been found for the resumption of 
diplomatic discussion of the question. Polk 
stiffly maintained his old position, but consented 
to take the advice of the Senate on any propo- 
sal that should come from Great Britain. The 
offer duly came of the forty-ninth parallel, re- 
serving to the British Vancouver Island and 
the navigation of the Columbia River. On the 
advice of the Senate Polk accepted this; the 
treaty was signed June 15, 1846, and went into 
effect in August. This happy outcome not only 
ended a dangerous tension between the two 
great English-speaking peoples, but by com- 
pleting a conventionally fixed boundary from 
ocean to ocean, seemed to remove definitively 
a prolific source of controversy. Unfortunately 
a small fraction of the line at the ocean end 
was defined in terms of geography rather than 
astronomy, and thus a dispute was prepared 
that was destined to carry the history of bound- 
ary troubles over another quarter of a century. 



134 THE ROARING FORTIES 

Before a settlement was reached of this rather 
insignificant difficulty Alaska had been acquired 
by the United States, with additional thousands 
of miles of contact with British territory, and 
material was provided for controversy that ex- 
tended well into the twentieth century. 

When the Oregon dispute was ended by the 
signing of the treaty, the United States was at 
war with Mexico. Hostilities had been pre- 
cipitated by a collision between Mexican and 
American troops on territory claimed by both 
governments. War had been practically cer- 
tain ever since the annexation of Texas, and Polk 
was on the point of beginning it on other grounds 
when the destruction of a small detachment of 
American troops gave him an opportunity to 
appeal strongly to popular passion. The griev- 
ances of the United States against Mexico were 
neither new nor few, but it was well understood 
that they could be satisfactorily adjusted by a 
cession of territory. California, extending some 
ten degrees of latitude southward from Oregon 
on the Pacific coast, was on the point of revolt 
from the weak and distant central government 
of Mexico. That the Californians were in mor- ^J^ 
tal terror of the Yankees was common knowW'f^\ 
edge; that British relations with Mexico were 



THE ROARING FORTIES 135 

intimate was equally well known. The pre- 
dilection of Great Britain for coastal territory- 
all over the globe, especially where adorned 
with so attractive a harbor as that of San Fran- 
cisco, had been exhibited for centuries. Finally, 
the British naval squadron on the Pacific coast 
displayed from time to time a kind and degree 
of activity that aroused grave suspicions of sin- 
ister designs. Out of all these elements was 
developed a wide-spread belief in the United 
States that California was about to fall into the 
hands of Great Britain. While the Oregon 
issue was acute, this feeling was naturally a 
source of much unhappiness. Polk entered the 
White House with a firm purpose to settle for 
all time the California question by acquiring the 
territory, with such an additional tract in the 
interior as would neatly round out the bound- 
ary eastward to Texas. Since Mexico refused 
to listen to any proposition for the purchase of 
California, forcible acquisition became an in- 
dispensable feature of Polk's programme, and 
the Mexican War would doubtless have taken 
place regardless of all other matters at issue. 

What actual ground there was for the fear 
that Great Britain was seeking to forestall Amer- 
ica in California has become known only in re- 



136 THE ROARING FORTIES 

cent years. The gist of Lord Aberdeen's policy- 
was, not to acquire California for Great Britain, 
but to keep it out of the hands of the United 
States by any means short of war. His posi- 
tion was the same as in relation to Texas. 
The interests of Great Britain required that the 
expansion of the American RepubHc be opposed 
by every peaceful influence. Aberdeen would 
have guaranteed California to Mexico if France 
had been willing to join in the bond. He re- 
jected overtures from a revolutionary party of 
California who suggested a British protectorate, 
but accompanied the rejection with a plain inti- 
mation 'that if a revolt should separate the 
province from Mexico, Great Britain would pre- 
fer to give it protection rather than see that 
function undertaken by any other power. After 
the annexation of Texas, when war was clearly 
impending, he urged Mexico in the most ener- 
getic terms to avoid war, on the ground that she 
would surely lose California also. He even took 
into apparently serious consideration schemes 
for the creation of a British interest in Califor- 
nia by large grants of land to British holders of 
Mexican bonds. But this was at the time when 
the Oregon question was in its acute stage, and 
the British cabinet perceived easily enough that 



THE ROARING FORTIES 137 

any such proceeding would be regarded as hos- 
tile by the United States, and would indefinitely 
postpone the settlement that was so eagerly 
desired. To keep open the possibility of Mex- 
ican aid in case the Oregon dispute led to war, 
was a most obvious duty of the British Govern- 
ment, and accordingly Aberdeen continued to 
show interest in California in the winter of 
1845-46. After the way to agreement with the 
United States became clear, and Mexico at the 
same time took the course that made a breach 
with that nation certain, California and Mexico 
were both left to their fate. 

If reason were anything like as large a factor 
in human affairs as is often pretended, the fric- 
tion between Great Britain and the United 
States in the forties over Oregon and California, 
if not over Texas, would never have developed. 
There was nothing of the rational in the spirit 
that led the American immigrants to Oregon, 
when much more promising opportunities for 
welfare in every sense lay open without a jour- 
ney of two thousand desert miles to reach them. 
The acquisition of California was projected be- 
fore any man faintly suspected its power to 
satisfy the hunger for gold, and when its enor- 
mous area could not reasonably be expected to 



138 THE ROARING FORTIES 

be adequately peopled for centuries. So far as 
suspicion of British designs on the Pacific ter- 
ritory operated to promote the American policy, 
that policy was doubtless rational; for the his- 
tory of the British Empire gave little assurance 
of a dislike for expansion, and strong Britain 
would be a less desirable neighbor than weak 
Mexico. Yet it would not have been difficult to 
ascertain and publish the truth, that neither the 
government nor the people of Great Britain in 
the forties had any wish or purpose to acquire 
any regions contiguous to the United States. 
The rather pronounced trend of feeling was in 
just the opposite direction, toward the thought 
that there was already somewhat more con- 
tact with the republic than was altogether de- 
sirable. 

What did most to increase by two-thirds the 
already vast area of the United States was the 
aggressive idealism of the American democracy. 
In the forties this characteristic was probably 
at its maximum. The nation was permeated 
with a sense of power and of destiny that tol- 
erated no suggestion of limit in any direction. 
On the cultural side indications of an approach- 
ing realization of the ideal were scanty; on the 
material side every manifestation of bigness 



THE ROARING FORTIES 139 

was accepted as normal and inevitable. The 
addition of 12,000,000 square miles of territory 
to their 18,000,000 aroused no misgivings in the 
mass of the people, and there were not lacking 
those who felt that the whole of Mexico should 
properly have been taken over instead of the 
northern provinces only. In the very month 
in which the treaty of peace was signed (Feb- 
ruary, 1848), by one of the most astonishing 
coincidences that history records, the acquisi- 
tion of California was justified, in the economic 
sense, by the discovery of gold in its mountains. 
As against this providential confirmation of 
manifest destiny, promptly developed the bitter 
strife over slavery in the new territory, with 
results so disastrous to the unity of the nation. 

Between 18 15 and 1840 the population of 
the United States increased from 8,000,000 to 
17,000,000. While large, this gain was not 
astounding, and it certainly gave no basis for 
an extension of territory. Overcrowding could 
not be considered imminent when the number 
of persons per square mile stood at 9.73. As 
compared with the United Kingdom the growth 
of the United States had effected a significant 
change in relations. The War of 1812 was 
fought by a people numbering 8,000,000 against 



140 THE ROARING FORTIES 

one numbering 19,000,000; a war over Oregon 
would have pitted 20,000,000 against less than 
27,000,000. What these figures portended as 
to the future distribution of the English-speak- 
ing race, was not difficult to see. With all its 
growth, however, whether absolute or relative, 
the American people sprawled and straggled 
over a territory much too large for its immediate 
needs, yet drew from the excess only the in- 
satiable yearning for more. 

In the thick of the unpleasantness over the 
Oregon question, it was often proclaimed by 
boastful Americans that Great Britain would 
not dare to fight a people so numerous as they 
had now become. So far as military or naval 
considerations were concerned, this was, of 
course, ridiculous. In another aspect, however, 
the growth of population in America had indeed 
raised up a powerful influence against war. 
British industry and commerce had become de- 
pendent in an extraordinary degree for their 
prosperity on the United States. As regularly 
as the seasons, three-fourths of the great cotton 
crop took ship for England from the ports of 
the southern States of the Union. Lancashire 
in the forties well understood the danger, that 
in the sixties became disaster, from the shutting 



THE ROARING FORTIES 141 

off of the raw material for the cotton-mills. 
At the earlier date, moreover, the peril was 
greater; for as yet Great Britain was still feed- 
ing her people from her own crops, and the 
people often went hungry. Starvation on a 
large scale would have ensued very promptly 
if the cotton supply had been stopped in the 
early forties. 

This was one disturbing result of the growth 
of population in the United Kingdom — a result 
that had no parallel in the United States. 
Where the food supply was redundant and cheap 
any interruption of normal economic processes 
by war or other disaster produced loss and dis- 
comfort but not famine. Where, as in England 
and Ireland, the food supply was precarious and 
dear, any interference with the normal condi- 
tions brought famine and revolt. In the early 
forties recurring distress and agitation among 
the working classes gave abundant warning to 
the leading statesmen that so grave an economic 
disturbance as would be involved in a war with 
the United States was not to be risked so long 
as any way of escape was open. 

The task of handling the delicate issues that 
were presented by the international and the 
internal problems that have been noticed fell 



142 THE ROARING FORTIES 

to the lot of the Tory cabinet of Sir Robert 
Peel, 1 841-6. As the one set of problems cen- 
tred in the due recognition of the American 
democracy, so the other set involved large con- 
cessions to the democratic movement in Great 
Britain. There was a connection between the 
two that, while it did not escape notice in the 
reasoned debates, for the most part lurked ob- 
scurely in the channels of popular feeling. 
Peel's government was called upon to deal with 
two questions of internal politics that particu- 
larly appealed to the American interest. These 
were the repeal of the union with Ireland and 
the abolition of the Corn Laws. 

O'Connell's tremendous agitation for the res- 
toration of an Irish Parliament such as had 
existed before 1800, won sympathy in America 
on various grounds other than that unthinking 
joy which greeted every situation producing 
trouble for the British Government. It seemed 
to be the demand of the common people for 
relief from oppression by a privileged class; it 
seemed to be a demand for self-government as 
opposed to foreign rule; it seemed to be a per- 
fect application of that principle of nationality 
that had been so eloquently proclaimed by 
Englishmen, both official and unofficial, in sus- 



THE ROARING FORTIES 143 

taining the claims of the Greeks and the Poles 
to independence. There survived, too, in the 
United States, the tradition of Grattan's Par- 
liament, which received the breath of life 
through the success of the war that made 
America free from Great Britain. Irishmen in 
thousands, many of them high in the esteem of 
their communities, pervaded the United States, 
and preached antipathy to Britain. Repeal 
rent, as the funds were called that sustained 
O'Connell's cause, flowed in copious streams 
from America. The suppression of the agita- 
tion by main force in 1843 made on more than 
Irish hearts the impression that in the govern- 
ment of Peel the hated forces of aristocratic 
tyranny were still clearly in the ascendant. 

The different outcome of the popular move- 
ment against the Corn Laws in England had some 
effect in moderating the distrust of Peel. When 
he came to power in 1841, every branch of 
British industry, mining, manufacturing, and 
agricultural, was protected by customs duties. 
When he left office five years later, the whole 
protective tariff had disappeared, and Great 
Britain was committed to freedom of trade. 
This great revolution was a direct continuation 
of the liberalizing reforms that had been in 



144 THE ROARING FORTIES 

progress since 1815. The immediate occasion 
for the change was the necessity of readjustment 
in the budget to get rid of a persistent deficit; 
the character of the change was determined, 
however, by the intellectual conviction slowly 
reached by Peel and his coadjutors that Adam 
Smith's economic philosophy was sound. To 
get rid of the protection on manufactures was 
no hard matter. The manufacturing centres 
were the abodes of Whigs and Radicals, and 
Peel's Tory followers were not unwilling to see 
them ruined. By 1845, through successive re- 
ductions, most of the old tariff was gone. The 
process involved some changes in the agricul- 
tural items and every step in this direction 
caused frantic alarm among the landowning 
aristocracy who furnished the bulk of the Tory 
party. It was becoming clear that the Corn 
Laws were doomed, and it seemed likely that the 
Tory leader himself was to be the agent for 
executing the decree. The full meaning of this 
situation to the aristocracy is to be realized 
only when attention is given to the extra- 
Parliamentary activities of the Anti-Corn-Law 
League. 

This organization was formed, as has been 
stated, in the later thirties, and was made a 



THE ROARING FORTIES 145 

vital force b3'^ Richard Cobden. In 1841 John 
Bright became formally associated with Cobden 
in their famous partnership of agitation. Under 
the leadership of these two men the League 
was, in object, in methods, and in organization, 
the open and determined foe of the ruling aris- 
tocracy. Its members were drawn chiefly from 
the working classes of the towns; its branches 
spread all over the land, on the model of the 
associations which O'Connell had made so well 
known; its method was that of unceasing ap- 
peal, in speech and print, to the thought and 
the emotions of the people; its object was to 
break down, not only the protective system and 
its particular provision as to corn, but the whole 
controlling influence of the landed aristocracy 
in the public affairs of the British nation. 
There was no effort to disguise this object. 
Cobden's lucid reasoning was pointed with 
scorn of the stupidity of the peers and squires 
in failing to see that free trade in corn was 
for their real interest; Bright's passionate elo- 
quence went straight to their selfishness, cruelty, 
and oppression in fighting to keep up their 
rents at the expense of a starving people. A 
stupid, selfish, cruel, tyrannical aristocracy, so 
the corollary ran, must no longer control the 



146 THE ROARING FORTIES 

destinies of the nation. The despised common 
people must assert themselves and be free. 
What Cobden and Bright did not say, though 
the harried Tories were not silent about it, was 
that the result of free trade would be to substi- 
tute an industrial and commercial for the old 
agricultural aristocracy in dominion over the 
nation. 

From 1842 to 1845 bad harvests, industrial 
depression, strikes, wide-spread poverty and dis- 
tress in England played perfectly the game of 
the Anti-Corn-Law League. In the last of these 
years came the frightful failure of the potato 
crop, making imperative some drastic step to 
mitigate the impending famine in Ireland. Peel 
knew that if he suspended the corn duties, as 
had been done twenty years before in an emer- 
gency, the League would be able to see to it 
that they should never be restored. He was 
already convinced that protection was econom- 
ically and politically wrong. There was noth- 
ing for him to do but demand of his party 
consent to the repeal of the Corn Laws. His 
measures for this purpose passed Parliament in 
1846, but their passage was the death-knell of 
the Tory party. An embittered fraction of the 
party, inspired chiefly by the rising Disraeli, 



THE ROARING FORTIES 147 

seized an early opportunity to desert the cab- 
inet and effect its downfall. 

The overthrow of the Peel government coin- 
cided in time with the conclusion of the treaty 
settling the Oregon dispute. Aberdeen an- 
nounced the agreement with the United States 
to the House of Lords on the same day that his 
retirement from office was announced. Though 
Cobden and Bright, with their middle-class and 
working-class followers, had played so large a 
part in the politics that brought about the crisis, 
it was not for them to take up the responsibil- 
ities of government. The Whigs, under Lord 
John Russell, assumed the governmental power, 
with Lord Palmerston at the Foreign Office, and 
with little indication that the democracy of En- 
gland was becoming self-conscious and articulate. 

For the first two years of its life the Russell 
administration was absorbed in dealing with 
the terrible conditions due to the potato blight. 
Famine effectually solved the problems of over- 
population in Ireland. At the same time it 
brought confusion into the whole social and 
political situation of the United Kingdom. 
American interest in British conditions received 
a great stimulus from the disaster in Ireland. 
Generous sums of money and whole fleets of 



148 THE ROARING FORTIES 

food-laden ships testified to the impression 
made by the pitiable sufferings of the afflicted 
people. Then came the great movement of 
the stricken Irish to the land of plenty. While 
the South and the West watched with all-ab- 
sorbing interest the gleams of smudgy glory 
from the war in Mexico, the eastern ports of 
the United States gave attention to the dismal 
myriads of half-starved Celts that poured in 
from distracted Erin. Economic, social, and 
political problems of many kinds promptly ap- 
peared in connection with the influx of aliens 
that assumed vast proportions first in 1847. 
The Irish were but the largest element in the 
immigration. Germans in large numbers also 
fled from the pinch of the potato famine. It 
was through the Irish, however, that a new and 
most important element was introduced into 
the relations among the English-speaking peo- 
ples. Canada and the other British provinces 
in America received no insignificant share of 
the immigration, with results that soon made 
themselves noticeable. Full half a century was 
destined to elapse before the impulse first given 
by the famine in Ireland ceased to be easily 
distinguishable among the factors determining 
Anglo-American relations. 



CHAPTER IV 

THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION TO 
HARMONY 

Philosophical historians warn us against 
over-emphasis on particular units of time or of 
space or of personaHty. To centre attention on 
a single date, a single place, a single individual, 
is to distort the truth and misrepresent the 
general movements of events. If disregard of 
this wise warning may ever be tolerated, a fair 
case for a free hand is presented by the year 
1848 in the history of the United States and 
its relations with Great Britain. Even more 
narrowly the month of February in that year 
may be assigned to a position of unique signifi- 
cance. To that month belong, as we have seen, 
the definitive acquisition of vast Mexican ter- 
ritory by the signing of the treaty of peace, and 
the discovery of gold in the newly acquired 
region. In the same month Louis Philippe was 
dethroned by a revolution in France, and a 
popular agitation was engendered that swept 

over all central and western Europe. Mon- 

149 



150 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

archies disappeared. Republics and constitu- 
tions and bills of rights and new nationalities 
became the order of the day. An orgy of liber- 
alism convulsed the Continent; even the United 
Kingdom felt the delirium, and was forced to 
deal with the Chartists demanding democracy 
and Young Ireland proclaiming itself a nation. 
When the tumult, after several feverish years, 
subsided, the most conspicuous result of it all 
was, oddly enough, the revived Napoleonic Em- 
pire in France. Less obvious, but not less 
influential in the long run on the history of 
human progress, was the host of exiles from the 
Continent who betook themselves to the lands 
of the English-speaking peoples. In particular, 
a great body of ardent, high-spirited, but bit- 
terly disappointed German liberals found refuge 
in the American Republic, in whose democratic 
institutions they expected to find a full realiza- 
tion of their cherished ideals. Though there 
was naturally much disillusionment when the 
actualities were discovered, the new environ- 
ment did not fail to prove attractive, and these 
political exiles were followed by a stream of 
Germans rivalling in volume that which was 
flowing in full current from Ireland. 

In Great Britain the revolutionary tempest 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 151 

on the Continent gave occasion for new and 
striking manifestations of the species of foreign 
pohcy that was already associated with the 
name of Lord Palmerston. His Lordship's sym- 
pathy and support went out to those who felt 
themselves to be victims of oppression with 
a degree of vehemence and ostentation that 
varied directly as the square of their distance 
from London. The Italians and the Magyars 
received strong encouragement in their efforts 
to escape from the Hapsburgs; the French 
republicans were tolerated in freeing themselves 
from Louis Philippe, but were relegated to the 
clutches of Napoleon III with much satisfaction; 
the English Chartists and the Irish Repealers 
were, of course, summarily suppressed. What- 
ever the defects or inconsistencies of Palmer- 
ston's conduct of the Foreign Office, it was 
enthusiastically supported by British popular 
sentiment. It appealed effectively to the jingo- 
istic spirit of a generation that had known only 
** little wars.** It was aggressive, but with a 
strongly liberal leaning in the immediate ends 
in view; its heaviest demonstrations were di- 
rected against the Russian Czar and the Aus- 
trian Emperor, whose sins with respect to their 
subjects were aggravated by a presumed hos- 



152 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

tility of a specially deadly character to British 
interests in the Orient. 

The Palmerstonian policy and methods were 
most violently antagonized by the Manchester 
School, as Cobden, Bright, and their followers 
were called. It was the cardinal doctrine of 
this school that internal, not international, 
affairs furnished the proper field for govern- 
mental activity at this particular time; that 
the welfare of the people and the due course of 
foreign relations would be best promoted by 
the readjustment of taxation, expansion of 
trade and industry, and abstention from the 
waste of war and of armaments in preparation 
for war. The two theories as to the policy of 
the government came to a decisive issue in the 
House of Commons in the famous debate over 
Don Pacifico in the middle of 1850. Against 
an assault led by Disraeli, Gladstone, Peel, 
and Cobden, Palmerston defended himself in 
his most celebrated speech, won a decisive tri- 
umph in the vote of the House, and thus com- 
mitted Great Britain to the policy associated 
with his name. Only a few months later his 
natural bumptiousness, accentuated doubtless 
by the sense of his great victory, brought him 
into conflict with his chief, Lord John Russell,. 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 153 

and with Majesty itself, with the result that 
Palmerston was summarily dismissed from his 
place. Even this severe experience did not 
loosen his hold on popular admiration and sym- 
pathy. The Whigs could not carry on the gov- 
ernment without him, and fell from power; the 
Aberdeen coalition cabinet drifted into the 
Crimean War through the force of the Palmer- 
stonian influence, but failed to develop the 
vigor that the situation required. In 1855, 
sorely against her own wishes, but responsive 
to an overwhelming popular demand, the Queen 
summoned Palmerston himself to form a cab- 
inet. For more than eight of the remaining 
ten years of his life he was prime minister, and 
British foreign relations were presumed to fol- 
low the lines associated with his name, though 
actually his policy and methods were substan- 
tially modified in passing through the hands of 
the foreign secretaries. Clarendon and Russell. 
It was well for the cause of amity that Polk 
and Palmerston did not synchronize more pre- 
cisely in their political ascendancy. A serious 
clash between the two would have meant 
disaster. The crude and narrow Tennessee 
Democrat offered a strange contrast to the 
broad culture and long experience of the Brit- 



154 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

ish aristocrat, but neither exceeded the other 
in strength of conviction that his people had 
the right and the duty of asserting itself in 
the world without overscrupulous regard for 
the rights and interests of other peoples. It 
was well again that Palmerston's chosen field 
for manifesting British power was the hemi- 
sphere from which Polk deliberately excluded 
himself. If this division of territory had worked 
both ways, some friction between the two great 
promoters of Anglo-Saxon ideas might have 
been avoided. Polk's hemisphere was too thor- 
oughly permeated with British interests, how- 
ever, to permit of any American development 
without touching them. Though Palmerston's 
personal concern about the Americans was of 
the slightest, and he preserved to the end the 
attitude of his early chief, Canning, in regard- 
ing the United States as a vexatious intruder 
in the field of serious diplomacy, yet his spirit 
was active in the subordinates who were on the 
ground in America, and trouble was an early 
result. 

The disintegration of Mexico on its northern 
frontier and the great southward stride of the 
United States along the Gulf of Mexico and the 
Pacific Ocean naturally excited the liveliest 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 155 

interest in Latin America and the colonial 
West Indies. With Cahfornia a part of the 
United States, the long-discussed projects of 
easy transit from ocean to ocean across Central 
America assumed immediate and pressing im- 
portance. The discovery of gold and the ensuing 
movement of fortune-hunters and settlers in 
myriads to the Pacific territory added a prodig- 
ious practical emphasis. Before this unforeseen 
climax appeared, however, both British and 
American diplomats had been diligently fishing 
in the murky waters of Latin-American politics 
for a controlling position in respect to any pos- 
sible isthmian canal. In the early forties a 
British official formally asserted that the terri- 
tory of the Mosquito Indians included the port 
of San Juan de Nicaragua, which would be the 
terminus of any canal that should be cut across 
Nicaragua. As the Mosquitos were held to 
be a kingdom under the protection of Great 
Britain, the bearing of the claim on their behalf 
was obvious. In 1848 the British officer came 
to San Juan with a war-ship, captured the Nica- 
raguan garrison, established a British garrison 
in possession, and changed the name of the port 
to Greytown. Meanwhile a group of islands 
off the coast, conveniently situated with refer- 



156 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

ence to San Juan and claimed by Honduras, 
was also occupied by a British garrison. 

In New Granada, at about the same time, 
the American charge d^ affaires displayed a like 
activity, and in 1846, without instructions, con- 
cluded with the government of that state a 
treaty of far-reaching importance. By its pro- 
visions the government and citizens of the 
United States and their property secured free- 
dom of transit across the Isthmus of Panama 
in return for a guarantee by the United States 
of the neutrality of the isthmus, and the fur- 
ther guarantee of the sovereignty and property 
of New Granada in the said territory. This 
treaty remained pending in the Senate until 
after the British movements in Nicaragua in 
1848. In June of that year the treaty, with the 
advice and consent of the Senate, was duly 
ratified. 

With this favorable position secured in respect 
to the Panama route, the Polk administration di- 
rected its attention to the situation in the region 
of the Nicaragua route. A charge d'affaires 
was sent to Central America to ascertain the 
condition of affairs. He readily obtained from 
the Nicaraguan Government, which was highly 
indignant at the activities of Great Britain, a 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 157 

treaty giving to the United States the exclusive 
right to construct a canal or railway through 
Nicaragua, in return for the guarantee of her 
just limits. Mr. Hise, who negotiated this con- 
vention, was succeeded shortly afterward by 
President Taylor's appointee, Mr. Squier, who 
in September, 1849, concluded a treaty with 
Honduras by which the island of Tigre, on the 
Pacific coast, was ceded to the United States. 
This island commanded the western end of the 
Nicaraguan route as Greytown commanded the 
eastern end. Less than a month after the con- 
clusion of this treaty, a British force took pos- 
session of Tigre. 

The situation thus created was a decidedly 
serious one. If all the successive proceedings 
had become public as they occurred, the two 
great English-speaking peoples would doubtless 
have been at each other's throats in short order. 
But communication with Central America was 
arduous and slow, and diplomacy was able 
to smooth out the wrinkles in the situation 
before the public was aware that they existed. 
Clayton, the new secretary of state at Wash- 
ington, was of pacific disposition, and President 
Taylor had none of the aggressive propensities 
of his predecessor. Nor did Lord Palmerston 



IS8 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

show any tendency to crabbedness, regarding 
the whole matter probably as a tedious trifle. 
The two governments promptly exchanged as- 
surances that no occupation or colonization of 
Central America was contemplated, and no 
exclusive control of a railway or canal across 
the isthmus. Clayton, on his side, withheld 
from the Senate the draft treaties of Hise and 
Squier; Palmerston disavowed the seizure of 
Tigre and ordered the garrison to be withdrawn. 
In considerable haste, lest new tempests should 
issue from the prolific storm-centre on the Carib- 
bean, the representatives of the two govern- 
ments at Washington then concluded the famous 
but ill-fated treaty of Clayton and Bulwer, 
signed April 19, 1850, and proclaimed in eff^ect 
July 5th. 

The purpose of this convention, as defined 
by its own provisions, was to promote the con- 
struction and maintenance of an interoceanic 
canal by the Nicaragua route "for the benefit 
of mankind, on equal terms to all.'* The two 
governments engaged never to obtain any ex- 
clusive control over such a canal, never to erect 
fortifications or establish colonies in its vicinity, 
never to use any relation of protection, alliance, 
or intimacy with contiguous states for the pur- 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 159 

pose of obtaining special privileges in the use of 
the canal. The two powers further undertook 
a joint guarantee of the neutrality of the canal, 
and of its protection from interruption, seizure, 
or unjust confiscation. 

The amicable and benevolent spirit supposed 
to be embodied in this treaty soon proved to 
be illusory. Approval of its provisions in the 
United States had been based in no small de- 
gree upon the impression that Great Britain 
was bound by it to abandon all her pretensions 
to a political foothold in Central America. 
Article I declared that neither party would ever 
"colonize or assume or exercise any dominion 
over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito 
coast or any part of Central America,'* or make 
use of any protectorate or alliance for the pur- 
pose of colonizing or exercising dominion over 
those same carefully specified regions. Under 
what appeared to be the obvious intent of this 
article, the withdrawal of the British from the 
Mosquito coast was awaited with impatience 
in America, but no indication of approaching 
withdrawal appeared. On the contrary, the 
islands off the coast were in 1851 formally or- 
ganized as a crown colony of Great Britain, 
thus giving permanence and solidity to an oc- 



i6o THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

cupation which had hitherto seemed tentative. 
Eventually it came to pubUc knowledge, what 
the foreign offices had known only too well, 
that the British interpretation of the Clayton- 
Bulwer Treaty involved no obligation whatever 
to withdraw from Central America. The two 
governments were, in fact, seriously at logger- 
heads as to the meaning of the vaunted agree- 
ment. 

The British position was this. Just prior 
to ratifying the treaty Sir Henry Bulwer, the 
negotiator, made the formal declaration that 
the British Government did not understand 
that the provisions applied to her Majesty's 
settlement at Honduras or to its dependencies. 
Clayton declared in reply that he also under- 
stood that Article I did not apply to "the Brit- 
ish settlement in Honduras (commonly called 
British Honduras, as distinct from the State of 
Honduras), nor the small islands in the neigh- 
borhood of that settlement which may be known 
as its dependencies." The guarded expression 
of Clayton indicates the gist of the controversy 
that developed. Great Britain claimed a bound- 
ary for British Honduras, or Belize, as it was 
commonly called, that was denied by the Cen- 
tral American states; she claimed further that 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION i6i 

the islands which had been made a colony were 
dependencies of Belize; and she claimed finally 
that the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty required her, 
not to relinquish her protectorate over the 
Mosquitos, but merely to abstain from using 
this protectorate for the purpose of control- 
ling the canal or of establishing colonies or 
dominion in Central America. Any such pur- 
pose she categorically disclaimed. She early 
manifested a readiness, moreover, to withdraw 
from occupation of territory held in the name of 
the King of the Mosquitos as soon as it should 
appear that this humble potentate and his sub- 
jects were assured of proper respect by their 
neighbors. 

The American contention, as fully developed, 
was based upon not only the Clayton-Bulwer 
Treaty, but also the Monroe Doctrine. It de- 
nied the validity of any claim of sovereignty 
by the Mosquitos, who, as a savage, degraded, 
and insignificant tribe of Indians, could be 
recognized by the public law of civilized na- 
tions as enjoying only a qualified right of occu- 
pation in the territory over which they roamed. 
A "treaty" with such a tribe could not be re- 
garded as vesting political authority in a great 
power like Great Britain. The alleged "pro- 



i62 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

tectorate" was, therefore, the diplomatic equiv- 
alent of a fraud. As to Belize, history revealed 
that British rights there were limited to certain 
privileges of cutting mahogany and dye-woods, 
and included no political authority. This dis- 
posed of the claim to power over the adja- 
cent islands as dependencies of British Hon- 
duras. The act of Great Britain in erecting 
these islands into a colony was therefore repug- 
nant to the announcement of President Monroe, 
often since formally reiterated, that the United 
States could not recognize the American con- 
tinents as open to colonization by European 
powers. 

Controversy on the lines of these widely 
divergent views was active in diplomacy and 
in popular debate for many years. Greytown, 
or San Juan de Nicaragua, assumed much 
importance as a station on the route of the 
thousands who were seeking California. Amer- 
icans in this adventurous host often took pains 
to show their disrespect for the officials who 
were exercising de jacto authority there, and 
incidents occurred from time to time that 
caused popular indignation to flame high on 
both sides of the Atlantic. The troubles culmi- 
nated in the bombardment and destruction of 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 163 

Greytown by an American war-ship, as a pun- 
ishment for violence by the townsmen to the 
American minister to Nicaragua. 

James Buchanan went as minister to London 
in 1853 with the special mission of bringing the 
serious situation to a settlement. Under the 
pacific ministry of Lord Aberdeen it was not 
hard to reach the general outline of an adjust- 
ment. Great Britain was ready to relinquish 
the Mosquito protectorate and the Bay Island 
colony as soon as it could be done with grace 
and dignity. The peculiar politics of Nicara- 
gua, with the extraordinary exploits of Walker's 
filibusters, interposed serious obstacles to this 
happy outcome, and the Crimean War raised up 
untimely diversion of the British Government's 
attention. Palmerston's accession to power in 
1855 brought a noticeable stiffening up of the 
British attitude. In consequence Buchanan re- 
turned to America in the following year with- 
out his mission attained. As President of the 
United States, however, he was able to an- 
nounce in his annual message of i860 a final 
settlement of the subject in a manner entirely 
satisfactory to the United States. 

The settlement in which Buchanan found rea- 
son for solid comfort was embodied in treaties 



1 64 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

concluded by Great Britain in 1859 and i860 
with Honduras and Nicaragua respectively. In 
these conventions all claim to a British pro- 
tectorate over the Mosquito territory was relin- 
quished and the sovereignty over that territory 
within their respective frontiers was recognized 
to the Central American states. The Bay 
Islands were recognized as an integral part of 
the republic of Honduras. In this adjustment 
the contention of the United States as to the 
effect of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty was sus- 
tained in full. British Honduras was, indeed, 
left to the dominion of Great Britain; but this 
was in accordance with the view adopted by 
the Americans that the territory was outside 
of Central America, and therefore was not af- 
fected by the provisions of the treaty. So 
far as concerned control over the expected 
canal through Nicaragua, neither the United 
States nor Great Britain had a privileged posi- 
tion in Central America. The great work 
might, therefore, be expected to be brought to 
completion promptly for the benefit of man- 
kind. Unhappily, by the time when the way 
became clear, all hope of progress in the actual 
construction of the canal had been relegated to 
an indefinitely distant future. Capital proved 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 165 

less enthusiastic than diplomacy over the pros- 
pects of transisthmian communication; but, 
however slowly the realization of the great 
dream approached, and with whatever of wile 
and guile in the lobbies of legislation in Nica- 
ragua and at Washington the realization must 
be promoted, the work of Clayton and Bulwer 
stood a majestic monument of a union of the 
two great English-speaking peoples for the ac- 
complishment and protection of a great public 
work that should be "for the benefit of man- 
kind, on equal terms to all." 

While the tension over the Central American 
affairs was acute, its effect was aggravated by 
various other subjects of suspicion and of con- 
troversy between the two governments. The 
craving for expansion of territory continued to 
manifest itself in the United States and to take 
a form determined more or less by the sectional 
cleavage of the nation on the slavery question. 
There was a steady pressure from the southern 
States for the extension of influence and pos- 
sessions in Latin America. Popular sympa- 
thy for the filibustering expeditions of Lopez 
against Cuba, and Walker in Central America, 
was strong enough to paralyze the efforts of the 
Washington government to prevent them. But 



1 66 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

the suggestion of a readiness on the part of 
Great Britain, in conjunction with her good 
ally Napoleon III, to undertake a guarantee of 
the threatened regions against the filibusters 
was peremptorily repelled by the United States. 
This much of interest in the subject by Great 
Britain only confirmed, however, the appre- 
hensions of the extreme pro-slavery partisans 
in the South, to whom the avowed abolitionism 
of the British was an ever-present terror. 

Internal party politics in the middle fifties 
contributed singularly to confirm the Amer- 
ican manifestations of anti-British feeling. 
After 1852 the Democratic Party controlled 
the government. The strength of this party 
consisted largely of the slaveholders of the South 
and the masses of Irish immigrants in the 
North. Enmity toward all things British was 
a dominant passion in both these classes. That 
the administrations of Pierce and Buchanan 
should, under the circumstances, have pre- 
served amity with Great Britain, is a tribute to 
the diplomatic correctness of statesmen whose 
reputations have been dimmed by the malev- 
olence of later political events. 

What was probably the most serious situation 
during the period we are discussing was pro- 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 167 

duced by the Crimean War. The causes and 
issues of that strange conflict, grasped only 
with much difficulty by the experts in Europe, 
were quite unintelligible in the United States. 
Sufficient for general popular feeling was the 
fact that Great Britain was a party to the war, 
in which case the other party must be right. 
Such at least was the reasoning of an influen- 
tial element of American society. It was ill- 
judged by the British Government that the 
time should have been selected for the project 
of raising a foreign legion in America to serve 
in the Crimea. The enlistment of troops for 
military service against a friendly power was, 
of course, prohibited by the laws of the United 
States. Success in the enforcement of the laws 
had not been especially marked in the case of 
the filibusters. Whether this fact was taken 
into account by the British, need not be de- 
bated. At all events, a systematic procedure 
was instituted through which a large number 
of men were forwarded from the United States 
to Halifax, to be there regularly incorporated 
into the British army. The procedure was 
directed by her Majesty's minister at Wash- 
ington, Mr. Crampton, and the consuls in sev- 
eral important cities. The enemies of England 



1 68 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

did not fail to inform the Washington govern- 
ment as to what was going on. Protests were 
at once made diplomatically at London, and 
their result was seen in an order from the Brit- 
ish Government forbidding the further execu- 
tion of the scheme. It was asserted by Lord 
Clarendon, the Foreign Secretary, that no vio- 
lation of the American laws had been contem- 
plated or committed, and an interpretation of 
these laws was presented under which all that 
had been done was legal. Mr. Marcy, the 
Secretary of State, declined to adopt this inter- 
pretation and demanded the recall of Crampton. 
Upon the refusal of this demand, Crampton was 
notified that the President would have no fur- 
ther intercourse with him, and the notification 
was accompanied with his passport. At the 
same time. May, 1856, the exequaturs of three 
British consuls were revoked. 

The dismissal of a minister is likely to be 
more thrilling in popular than in official circles. 
The whole progress of the affair was attended 
by violent declamation in the bellicose contin- 
gent of the press in both England and America. 
British excitement was enhanced by the simul- 
taneous reports, persistently reiterated, that a 
ship under construction at New York was to 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 169 

be a Russian privateer. Later the ministry- 
thought wise to reinforce the naval force at the 
Bermudas, and this further nourished the pre- 
vailing war spirit. There was a good deal of 
sentiment in England that the rather unsatis- 
factory meed of military glory acquired in the 
now finished Crimean War should at once be 
supplemented in a contest with the aggressive 
Americans. No such feeling made any headway, 
however, in the cabinet. Crampton's dismissal 
was accepted as within the rights of the Amer- 
ican Government. But he was knighted and 
promoted. A new minister, Lord Napier, was 
soon sent to replace him at Washington, and 
to Napier's lot fell the duty of confirming a 
satisfactory adjustment of all the outstanding 
controversies between the two governments. 

The war with Russia furnished the first sit- 
uation since 181 5 that might raise anew the 
question of the right to impress sailors into 
the British navy from American merchant ves- 
sels. There was some speculation as to the 
possibility of a revival of the practice, and some 
bristling discourse in the jingoistic American 
press as to the dire consequences that would 
follow. The generation that had elapsed since 
the Napoleonic wars had brought changes. 



I70 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

however, which, without reference to the feeHng 
of the Americans, rendered the idea of resort 
to the old method of recruiting by the British 
Government ridiculous. Nor did the power of 
Russia, as compared with that of her allied foes, 
suggest that Great Britain would be driven to 
desperate devices. Yet the British Govern- 
ment had never formally abandoned her claim 
to the right of search and impressment, and the 
memories and traditions of the way in which 
the right had been exercised in the old days 
undoubtedly sharpened the resentment in Amer- 
ica at the operations for the enlistment of re- 
cruits for the army. 

The time was now at hand for the termina- 
tion of the long diplomatic difference between 
the two nations on the matter of the right of 
search. Complaints about the detention and 
search of American ships by British cruisers 
led to a renewed discussion of the procedure 
for the suppression of the slave-trade. This 
was in 1858, when the American interests were 
in the hands of President Buchanan and Sec- 
retary of State Cass, both men of long and 
intimate acquaintance with the diplomacy of 
this question. We have seen that the British 
contention in the matter had been reduced to 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 171 

the claim of a right of visitation, as distinct 
from the right of search, and that the American 
view denied the vahdity of any such distinction. 
Cass presented the American view in an elabo- 
rate note to Lord Napier on April 10, 1858, deny- 
ing the " right of the cruisers of any other power 
whatever, for any purpose whatever, to enter 
their [United States] vessels by force in time of 
peace." Lord Malmesbury, Foreign Secretary 
in the cabinet of the Earl of Derby, which 
interrupted the domination of Palmerston from 
February, 1858, to June, 1859, declared in a 
despatch to Napier that Great Britain recog- 
nized as sound "those principles of international 
law which have been laid down by General 
Cass in his note of the loth of April." This 
formal abandonment of the claim that had made 
so much trouble between the two countries was 
publicly avowed by Lord Malmesbury soon 
afterward, who said: "We frankly confessed 
that we have no legal claim to the right of visit 
and of search which has hitherto been assumed." 
So full and frank a confession of persistent error 
afforded ample ground for the gratification felt 
and proclaimed by President Buchanan. There 
was involved in the British action no relaxation 
of vigor in the suppression of the slave-trade, 



1/2 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

no abandonment of the claim to the indefeasible 
allegiance of the subjects of the crown or of the 
right to force those subjects into the service of 
the navy. All that resulted from the new atti- 
tude of the British Government was the addi- 
tion of that government's powerful support to 
the movement toward the freedom of the seas. 
So soon as the visitation of a vessel bearing the 
American flag ceased to be claimed as a right 
by Great Britain, the last great obstacle was 
removed that barred the most efficient co-opera- 
tion for the suppression of the slave-trade. 
Within a few years the United States came to 
an agreement with Great Britain authorizing the 
cruisers of either nation to search a suspected 
slaver bearing the colors of the other. This 
arrangement had been diligently sought by the 
British Government for years, but the United 
States had held off so long as that was claimed 
as a right which they were willing to concede 
only as a conventional impairment of a right. 

While the Central American situation and 
the other matters noticed above were dragging 
their troubled way to a settlement and engag- 
ing the chief interest of the two greater peoples 
of the English-speaking trio, the third member 
of the group passed through a scries of inter- 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 173 

esting and somewhat critical experiences in 
both domestic and foreign affairs. The insur- 
rectionary movements in Canada in the late 
thirties were followed, as we have seen, by the 
establishment of a new constitution in 1841, 
under which the two provinces were united 
into one. Party strife continued in the new 
system to centre about the same question that 
had been the core of controversy in the old, 
namely, how far the governor-general and his 
ministers should be subject to popular control. 
The problem was difficult. The administra- 
tion of the colony must be subject to the con- 
trol of the home ministry; how could it be 
subject at the same time to the direction of 
the majority in the legislative assembly? How 
could the connection with the British Empire 
be secure if Canadian policy must be deter- 
mined by a majority that might follow a Papi- 
neau or a Mackenzie? So long as the Tory 
cabinet of Sir Robert Peel held sway at West- 
minster, with Lord Stanley at the Colonial 
Office, the old system continued to prevail in 
Canada. The popular opposition grew steadily 
stronger and more demonstrative as the fear 
of renewed violence wore away. The Whig 
cabinet that succeeded Peel in 1846 sent as 



174 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

governor-general to Canada the Earl of Elgin, 
son-in-law of Lord Durham. Elgin at once 
committed himself fully to the principle of min- 
isterial responsibility. The first election after 
his accession to power resulted in a sweeping 
victory for the Reform or Liberal Party, and 
to the leader of this party's majority in the 
legislature Elgin intrusted the formation of a 
ministry. In this action the advance of de- 
mocracy in Canada was definitely recognized, 
whatever the effect might be on the connection 
with the mother country. Within a few years 
responsible ministries were conducting the af- 
fairs of the other North American provinces also, 
without visible peril to the unity of the empire. 
Lord Elgin's practical solution of the chief 
constitutional issue did not bring political calm 
in Canada. On the contrary, he had to deal 
with a particularly bitter revival of the race 
conflict that was latent in the party alignment. 
The strength of the Tories was in the English 
population of Upper Canada, while the Liberals 
had their largest membership among the French 
of the lower province. With the accession of 
the Liberals to power the long domination of the 
United Empire Loyalists ended, and the loss 
of place and privilege in the administration was 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 175 

attended by the ill feeling natural under the 
circumstances. Fear of approaching French as- 
cendancy was widely proclaimed, and in a less 
degree actually felt. The disquiet was aggra- 
vated by one of the early acts of the Liberal 
legislature. This was a law giving compensa- 
tion to loyal subjects in Lower Canada whose 
property had been destroyed in the military 
operations against the rebels in the late insur- 
rection. A similar measure applying to Upper 
Canada had been passed by the Tories before 
their fall; their view in reference to the lower 
province was, however, that disaffection had 
been practically universal, and that compensa- 
tion for losses would, therefore, be a premium 
on rebellion. The Liberals pushed their bill 
through in spite of the bitterest hostility, and 
Lord Elgin, with the assent of the home gov- 
ernment, gave it his approval. One immediate 
result was that his Lordship was stoned by a 
mob, and the Parliament House was burned to 
the ground. 

This riotous outbreak occurred in April, 
1849, at Montreal. Other causes co-operated 
with the compensation bill to inflame the pop- 
ular wrath. All Canada was suffering from a 
serious industrial depression. Montreal was 



176 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

the chief centre of business and the largest city 
of the colony. The distress among the people 
was peculiarly severe at this centre, and the ma- 
terial for a riotous assemblage was peculiarly 
plentiful. Montreal was, moreover, the chief 
seat of the English interest in Lower Canada, 
and the place in which the fear of French 
ascendancy was keenest. In 1849 a consider- 
able group of influential men at Montreal 
were indicating a willingness to go even so far 
as separation from the British connection if 
that should prove the only means of escape from 
the evils that threatened or actually beset them. 
To understand the source of this extreme coun- 
sel it is necessary to look at the larger aspects 
of the free-trade reform and of Manchesterism 
in general so far as it affected the English-speak- 
ing world. 

The protective system that Peel destroyed 
in 1846 was based primarily upon the purpose 
of benefit to the people of Great Britain, but 
it by no means disregarded the interests of 
the British subjects who lived in the colonies. 
Both customs and navigation laws included 
many and intricate provisions designed to give 
to the colonists advantages over all the world 
save the favored producers and merchants of 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 177 

the mother country. Canada, owing to its 
proximity to the United States and the identity 
of its chief products with those of the repubhc, 
required and possessed special preferences in 
the British tariff in order to maintain any sat- 
isfactory position in the competition with her 
more advanced and more populous neighbor. 
In 1843 the Peel government passed an act 
designed to aid agriculture in Canada, by giving 
to Canadian wheat and flour a much-reduced 
duty in Great Britain. The provisions of this 
act applied to all flour exported from Canada, 
regardless of the origin of the wheat. The 
effect of the law was soon manifest in a great 
development of the milling industry In the col- 
ony, with corresponding activity in commerce. 
American wheat was imported all along the 
border, turned into flour, and shipped from 
Montreal and Quebec to England, where the 
tariff barred direct importation from the United 
States. 

The prosperity that followed the Canada Corn 
Act had just become generally manifest when 
in 1846 protection was abandoned and the ports 
of Great Britain were thrown open to wheat 
and flour from all the world. Every advantage 
enjoyed by colonial produce in the British mar- 



178 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

ket was swept away by free trade. The result 
in Canada was the prompt collapse of the in- 
dustries that had been built up by the act of 
1843. The short season of exaggerated pros- 
perity was succeeded by a period of depression 
and distress. Angry protests arose from the 
capitalists and mercantile classes that they had 
been ill treated by the home government. The 
working class mobbed the governor, as we have 
seen. In the destruction of their business the 
Canadian Tories, who included the leading mer- 
chants of Montreal, found an aggravation of the 
disregard for their feelings and interests that 
was manifested in the "compensation for rebel- 
lion." Expressions of discontent began to take 
on extreme form in the press and in the legis- 
lature. The cure for the existing and threat- 
ened evils that was most often proposed was 
annexation to the United States. 

During the year 1849 an agitation for annexa- 
tion assumed proportions that attracted serious 
attention. A manifesto issued at Montreal in 
October, and signed by a large number of the 
most substantial citizens, set forth the misfor- 
tunes and distress of Canada in temperate but 
convincing terms, and argued that of all the 
remedies suggested the only one that promised 



H 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 179 

results was "a friendly and peaceful separation 
from British connection, and a union upon eq- 
uitable terms with the great North American 
confederacy of sovereign states." The revival 
of protection in the United Kingdom could not 
be depended on; a system of protection for 
Canada might create manufactures but would 
furnish no market for them; the same failure 
would attend the suggested federation of the 
American colonies or their independence. Un- 
restricted commercial intercourse with the great 
population to the southward was indispensable 
to the economic welfare of Canada, and this 
could be secured only by incorporation into the 
Union. Political advantages also would flow 
freely from such a connection. With malicious 
allusion to the late tension about Oregon and 
the rising dispute over Central America, the 
manifesto continued: 

Disagreement between the United States and her chief, 
if not only, rival among nations would make the soil 
of Canada the sanguinary arena for their disputes. . . . 
That such is the unenviable condition of our state of de- 
pendence upon Great Britain is known to the whole world; 
and how far it may conduce to keep prudent capitalists 
from making investments in the country, or wealthy set- 
tlers from selecting a foredoomed battlefield for the home 
of themselves and children, it needs no reasoning on our 
part to elucidate. 



i8o THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

There was added a comparison of the depend- 
ence and subordination of the Canadians in the 
existing conditions with the proud equaUty they 
would enjoy as citizens of the United States. 
The honors and emoluments of the British Em- 
pire were denied them as colonials, while all the 
distinctions of the American Republic would be 
within their reach. 

The movement of which this document was 
the pronunciamento was in Canada to a great 
extent an episode of provincial party politics. 
Support for it was drawn almost entirely from 
two sources, the Tories and the ultra-demo- 
cratic element of the French Liberals. Such an 
alliance had no possibility of permanence or of 
effectiveness. What the one party had most 
at heart in the proposed union with the United 
States was wholly abhorrent to the other. The 
inner repugnance of the two elements was kept 
in abeyance at first, and for some months agita- 
tion through associations and public meetings 
was active and to the government disquieting. 
Though the annexationists invariably declared 
that the peaceful consent of Great Britain was 
an absolute prerequisite to the realization of 
their purpose. Lord Elgin, on the advice of his 
ministry, took pains to discourage the agita- 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION i8i 

tion, and excluded from the public service those 
who identified themselves with the movement. 
This was a severe blow to the Tory element of 
the discontented. The French element received 
a like setback through the strong and open con- 
demnation of the agitation by the Catholic 
clergy. Good harvests and a revival of business 
served to alleviate the economic situation, and 
after some small successes in the elections in 
1850 the organization and activity of the an- 
nexationists faded gradually away. 

In neither Great Britain nor the United States 
did the movement in Canada attract much 
attention. Home politics in the great republic 
were just at the time in a state that left little 
room for public concern with matters beyond 
the border. Territorial extension had raised is- 
sues as to slavery that were threatening dis- 
ruption of the Union. Under the circumstances 
a proposal of further extension could hardly be 
expected to enlist much enthusiasm. In some 
of the States contiguous to Canada the legis- 
latures passed resolutions approving the idea 
of reuniting the long-severed members of the 
English-speaking race in North America. At 
Washington, however, there was no manifesta- 
tion of feeling by either legislature or executive. 



l82 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

Indifference or positive hostility was indeed the 
attitude assumed toward even the projects of 
commercial reciprocity that were being urged 
upon the attention of the government by repre- 
sentatives of Canada. 

At Westminster and in England at large the 
growth of the movement for annexation was 
followed naturally with rather closer interest. 
There was ample basis for the assertion of the 
Canadian agitators that their proposed remedy 
for colonial ills had its origin in Great Britain. 
Ultimate separation had long since been de- 
clared by distinguished Britons to be a natural 
incident of development in the colonies so soon 
as the union with the mother-land should become 
burdensome. On this principle, it was argued, 
the British Government's concern in the matter 
was limited to the question of separation. As- 
suming that the reasons for separation were 
sufficient, the determination as to what shall 
follow independence must be left to the colonists 
themselves. Annexation proper, therefore, was 
no matter for discussion with Great Britain. 

During the process of transition from protec- 
tion to free trade the debates of British politics 
had furnished an impressive addition to the 
list of great names sustaining the idea of even- 



I 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 183 

tual independence for the colonies. All shades 
of party opinion contributed to the list. Pro- 
tectionist Tories believed that the burden of 
sustaining the colonies would be intolerable 
now that the policy of exploiting them for the 
benefit of the mother-land was given up. The 
Peelites and conservative Whigs contended that 
free trade would prove the economic salvation 
of both colonies and mother-land, and would 
thus strengthen the bond uniting them, but ad- 
mitted that if for any reason the interests of 
either clearly should demand separation, there 
would be no valid ground for opposing it. Rad- 
icals proclaimed the democratic dogma of the 
people's will and held that independence was 
the right of the colonists whenever and for what- 
ever reason they demanded it. Disraeli, Peel, 
Gladstone, and Lord John Russell all put on 
record their conviction that British policy must 
be shaped in contemplation of the gradual dis- 
solution of the empire. Cobden was, of course, 
the high priest of this creed; but Cobden never 
held the reins of governmental authority. His 
luminous expositions of the creed lacked the 
immediate practical effect of such words as those 
of Lord John Russell, prime minister, in 1850. 
Concluding his speech in the Commons in which 



i84 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

he denounced the annexationists of Canada, he 
said: 

I anticipate indeed with others that some of the col- 
onies may so grow in population and wealth that they 
may say: "Our strength is sufficient to enable us to be 
independent of England . . . the time is come when we 
think we can, in amity and alliance with England, main- 
tain our independence." I do not think that that time 
is yet approaching. But let us make them as far as pos- 
sible fit to govern themselves — let us give them, as far 
as we can, the capacity of ruling their own affairs — let 
them increase in wealth and population; and, whatever 
may happen, we of this great empire shall have the con- 
solation of saying that we have contributed to the hap- 
piness of the world. 

This amiable and pacific pronouncement was 
not relished by the Canadian authorities. It 
involved a concession of the chief principle of 
the annexationists and limited controversy with 
them to the mere question of the proper time 
for putting their project into effect. Lord 
Elgin recorded a strong protest against the 
prime minister's expressions, as seriously embar- 
rassing to the colonial government. Russell 
undoubtedly voiced, however, the prevailing 
political philosophy of his day. The free-trade 
movement in Great Britain presented a com- 
bination of two clearly distinguishable ele- 
ments, a refined and gentle idealism and a crude. 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 185 

rough materialism. Its intellectual supporters 
considered unrestrained action in commerce and 
industry as but a further realization of the 
liberty that was natural to a rational being; free 
trade was a right of man like free speech and 
free worship; abolition of the protective tariff 
was a step toward the perfection of the indi- 
vidual and the race. In Cobden's expositions 
this philosophy was most skilfully blended with 
consideration of the practical needs of the Brit- 
ish merchants and manufacturers. The latter, 
however, were little concerned about abstract 
liberty and the progress of the race. Free trade 
with them was a matter only of markets. Ex- 
pansion of commerce, new consumers of com- 
modities, enlargement of plants to the point of 
maximum production and profit — these summed 
up the advantages of free trade from the busi- 
ness man's point of view. To him colonists 
were but customers; to the idealists they were 
but men, with natural rights. That they were 
Englishmen and were determined by that fact 
from the beginning of the world to changeless 
political union with other Englishmen, was a 
conception that had no place in the thought 
of either element of the free-traders. The fed- 
eration of the world and not imperial feder- 



1 86 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

ation was the key-note of British UberaHsm 
in 1850. 

Lord John Russell's peremptory denial of 
the claim that the time was ripe for Canadian 
independence was preceded by legislation de- 
signed to remedy some of the ills that gave rise 
to the claim. In 1849 Parliament swept away 
the last remnants of the old restrictive com- 
mercial system by repealing the famous Nav- 
igation Laws. The operation of these laws 
greatly aggravated the misfortunes that were 
brought upon Canada by the abolition of 
preferential duties in the mother country. Co- 
lonial commerce with Great Britain was limited 
to British ships, and freight rates were corre- 
spondingly high. American competition, duly 
favored by Congressional legislation, was able 
thus to make sad inroads on various branches 
of the trade with the home country. Com- 
plaints from Canada became urgent at West- 
minster, and there was no room to doubt that 
they were well founded. The Whig cabinet, 
therefore, resolved to complete the work that 
Huskisson had begun twenty years before, and 
the carrying trade between the colonies and the 
United Kingdom was thrown open to the ships 
of all the world. 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 187 

The abandonment of the restrictive system 
generally by Great Britain left the North Amer- 
ican colonies, and especially Canada, still in an 
uncomfortable plight. Free trade made their 
prosperity dependent on the commercial policy 
of the United States as fully as protection had 
kept it dependent on the policy of the United 
Kingdom. From the point of view of pro- 
duction the northern part of the United States 
and the British provinces were a unit; the out- 
put of their fields and forests was practically 
the same. From the point of view of markets 
the colonists were at a great disadvantage. In 
the United States population was much denser, 
and the facilities for transportation were vastly 
superior. The Canadians were not yet beyond 
the stage of canals, while on the other side of 
the border railways had attained a remarka- 
ble development. What was necessary to the 
prosperity of the Canadians was free access to 
the markets of the greater neighbor. But the 
Americans made no haste to remove the tariff 
barrier with which they had met the old policy 
of restriction. To the advances of the British 
Government looking to reciprocal free trade on 
the Canadian frontier they presented the old 
familiar question: What have you to offer in 



1 88 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

return? Fortunately a now long-standing dis- 
pute over the ancient subject of the fisheries 
enabled Westminster to make an answer that, 
after years of consideration, was accepted as 
sufficient. 

We have seen that in 1818 the United States 
renounced the liberty of taking fish "within 
three marine miles of any of the coasts, bays, 
creeks, or harbors" of British America except 
certain clearly described portions of the shores 
of Newfoundland and Labrador. In the later 
thirties complaints began to be heard from 
Nova Scotia that the American fishermen were 
disregarding this agreement by plying their 
trade in the bays of that colony. Legislation 
was enacted to punish the intruders and ulti- 
mately British naval vessels were sent to patrol 
the coast. The Americans stoutly denied that 
they were intruding, and the seizure of their 
fishing-vessels gave rise to prolonged diplo- 
matic proceedings. 

It appeared that certain most valuable species 
of fish had, with the disregard of human con- 
ventions that is so characteristic of the lower 
species of animate things, manifested their pres- 
ence in paying numbers much nearer land than 
the standard cod ever ventured. In pursuit of 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 189 

the profitable game the Americans were brought 
within what the British claimed were **bays,'* 
and as such were barred to the fishermen. A 
*'bay/' in the sense of the treaty, was, accord- 
ing to the contention of the British, any ex- 
panse of water designated by that name, so 
that an American fisherman was an intruder 
even twenty miles from land, if he was fishing 
in water that was called a bay. The Americans 
claimed that the term ''bay" applied with cer- 
tain qualifications only to an indentation of the 
coast-line of such size and shape that a ship, 
when entering it, must pass within three miles 
of the land. In its full development the Brit- 
ish doctrine held that the "coasts" from which 
the Americans were excluded were defined by 
a broken line running from headland to head- 
land, so that there was no right to fish within 
three miles of such a line. The American 
claim was that British jurisdiction extended no 
more than three miles from actual land, and 
that the geometrical lines from headland to 
headland included often large portions of the 
high seas that were free to all. 

There was abundant material in this conflict 
for endless debate by the experts of the law 
of nations. Of most importance to the prac- 



I90 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

tical statesman was the simple fact that the 
Americans were as deeply interested to get 
admission to the inshore fishing as the Cana- 
dians were to get free access to the markets 
of the United States. The quid pro quo ex- 
pected by the Washington government was at 
hand, and the bargain was formally struck in 
the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, concluded by 
Lord Elgin and Secretary of State Marcy. By 
this agreement the Americans acquired again 
the liberty, renounced in 1818, of taking fish 
in the bays, harbors, and creeks of the British 
provinces (except Newfoundland), without re- 
striction as to distance from the shore. The 
British colonists gained the coveted access to 
the American markets through the provision 
for the reciprocal admission duty-free of enu- 
merated commodities that included the prin- 
cipal products of the soil, the mines, and the for- 
ests. Reciprocity was further applied through 
the admission of the Americans to the naviea- 
tion of the Saint Lawrence River, and the ad- 
mission of the Canadians to the navigation of 
Lake Michigan. 

The effect of this treaty on the relations 
between the English-speaking peoples of the 
Western world was marked and salutary. Fric- 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 191 

tion over the fisheries passed away. Trade 
increased by leaps and bounds. British Amer- 
ica and the United States tended manifestly 
toward that economic sohdarity which the 
geographic conditions seemed to make natural. 
In 1854, the last full year before the treaty went 
into effect, the total trade between the two 
peoples was about ^35,000,000; in 1856, the 
first full year after the treaty went into effect, 
the total trade was ^57,000,000. This increase 
signified more than a mere enhancement of 
mercantile profits. It meant the promotion of 
the neighborly spirit and feelings between neigh- 
bors. It meant that those people who lived 
on opposite banks of the Detroit or the Niag- 
ara River, or on opposite sides of a surveyor's 
line, should no longer meet with legal obstacles 
to the free intercourse that proximity invited. 
It meant a great multiplication of the social 
and financial ties across the frontier that are 
sure to be created by increasing trade. In any 
estimate of the influences that made for friendly 
and sympathetic relations among English-speak- 
ing peoples in i860, the Reciprocity Treaty of 
1854 must stand side by side with the diplo- 
matic adjustments already described concern- 
ing Central America and the right of search. 



192 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

The general international harmony and cor- 
diality that pervaded the English-speaking world 
at the beginning of the sixties was destined to 
disappear for more than a decade through the 
conditions produced by the Civil War in the 
United States. Before considering the unfortu- 
nate effects of that convulsion, let us note the 
salient features of the English-speaking world at 
this period, as compared with what the term 
had denoted at the date of the Treaty of Ghent, 
forty-six years in the past. 

In numbers the United Kingdom no longer 
stood first. With 10,000,000 more inhabitants 
than in 18 14, its 29,000,000 fell short by 2,000,- 
000 of the population of the United States. 
British North America showed a sixfold increase 
to 3,000,000, of whom all but 500,000 were in 
Canada. Among the scattered dependencies 
of Britain the vast spaces of Australia were be- 
ginning to fill up through the thirst for gold, 
and some half-million settlers were shaping the 
foundations of a new English-speaking com- 
monwealth. In none of these chief groups, how- 
ever, was there such uniformity of English 
speech as to prophesy complete social and po- 
litical concord. The brogue of the Irish Celt, the 
barbarous dialect of the African slave, and the 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 193 

patois of the French habitant suggested grave 
problems of statecraft in Great Britain and 
America; while Austraha at this date was so 
little developed as to make the ultimate triumph 
of English still problematical. 

Economically Great Britain was in i860, as 
she had been in 18 14, the leading power of the 
world. In both trade and manufactures she 
stood easily first. Her mercantile marine and 
her navy still surpassed those of any other na- 
tion. Yet there was no such disparity between 
her and the American Republic as was so con- 
spicuous half a century earlier. In the carry- 
ing trade of the world the United States was 
Britain's nearest rival. In manufactures Brit- 
ish supremacy was confirmed by the transition 
from the domestic to the factory system, which 
was practically complete in England in i860. 
This supremacy it was not yet in the power of 
the sparse population of the United States to 
contest. For one branch of textiles, however, 
and that a most important one, namely, cotton 
goods, the dependence of England on the Ameri- 
cans for raw materials was complete, as was fore- 
seen by the leaders of the American secessionists. 

Politically, also, British and American ideas 
and conditions were much less remote from 



194 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

each other than at the time of the Treaty of 
Ghent. Both peoples had been moving to- 
ward democracy. The Americans found httle 
to obstruct their swift and steady advance. 
The British moved sluggishly on among the 
obstacles of centur}"-old institutions and preju- 
dices, and made certain, if less than rapid, 
progress. England could not show in i860, as 
the United States could, manhood suffrage, one- 
year terms for important executive officers, or 
an elective judiciary. On the other hand, the 
Tory aristocracy that had controlled British 
policy in 18 14 had passed from power forever. 
The Whig nobles were giving way, as a con- 
trolling political force, to the liberal and radical 
elements of their party, hot from Birmingham 
and Manchester. Though "the Dukes" contin- 
ued to figure in the councils of the party, its 
vital energy centred elsewhere, and was nour- 
ished on projects touching the suffrage, the 
church, education, and landlords, that could be 
realized only after Palmerston and Russell had 
passed from the political stage and left Glad- 
stone to transform the Whig into the Liberal 
Party. The ideas that were thus approaching 
their triumph in Great Britain were ideas that 
America claimed as peculiarly its own. They 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 195 

embodied the aspirations of the working chisses 
and non-conformists in Great Britain and the 
great mass of the Irish. These were the classes 
best known and best understood in the United 
States. PoHtics that involved their point of 
view and their interests was intelHgible to the 
Americans, while the poHtics of the aristocracy- 
was unintelhgible and hence repulsive. So far, 
therefore, as the character of British problems 
changed in the sense described, sympathetic and 
cordial relations were strengthened. 

At just the period we are treating, moreover, 
the effects of the vast migration of English- 
speaking people that marked the middle of the 
century were fully manifest. In the fifteen years 
ending with i860 4,700,000 emigrants left the 
United Kingdom, of whom something like three- 
fourths went to the United States. British 
America was the announced destination of a mil- 
lion of them; but the drift of the newcomers 
across the boundary from the provinces into 
the United States was continuous and on a large 
scale. The number who set out for the United 
States direct was 2,900,000. 

Of the total from the United Kingdom Ire- 
land furnished, of course, the very great ma- 
jority. A million Irishmen emigrated to the 



196 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

United States in the years 1847-52, and a quar- 
ter of a million went to British North Amer- 
ica. The census of i860 gave the number of 
natives of Ireland in the United States as 
1,611,304; the number of English-born as 433,- 
494; of Scots as 108,518; of Welsh as 45,763. 
The Irish made an impression socially and po- 
litically that was even deeper than their excess 
in numbers would warrant. Their animosity 
toward the English made it imperative that a 
politician who needed their support should dis- 
play in some form an anti-British feeling. The 
performances that were elicited by this require- 
ment were at times disheartening to those who 
hoped for harmony; but the motive became 
in time so obvious and the act so perfunctory 
that "twisting the British lion's tail" lost all 
relation to serious thought. The tales of suffer- 
ing in the famine and of heartless oppression by 
landlords doubtless roused much feeling as they 
circulated through America. On the other hand, 
the religion and various racial traits of the Irish 
tended to excite a hostility to them that coun- 
teracted much of their anti-British influence. 

Among the elements that co-operated to de- 
termine the relations between the British and 



THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 197 

the American branches of the EngHsh-speaklng 
people, contemporary Hterature was in i860 
of well-defined importance. By that date the 
United States had fairly freed itself from the 
reproach of utter unproductiveness in this field. 
Only the most narrow and hidebound devotees 
of expiring English Toryism still failed to find 
a readable American book. Irving, Cooper, 
and Poe had won distinct, if not wildly enthu- 
siastic, recognition from the oracles of literary 
taste in Britain. Prescott, Motley, and Emer- 
son were receiving attention. Not a few other 
writers were wresting from the cultivated classes 
of the United Kingdom the hesitating admis- 
sion that the American democracy might yet 
mean something in the life of the spirit. The 
harmonizing influence of this feeling had its 
complement in the impression made by British 
writers in America. The stars of the mid- 
Victorian galaxy were glowing with meridian 
splendor in i860. Carlyle, Ruskin, Tennyson, 
Browning, Dickens, Thackeray, and George 
Eliot — to name but a few — were honored as 
intensively, if not as extensively, in the United 
States as in England. One of them, Charles 
Dickens, had vogue and popularity far above 
all the rest in the United States, and this de- 



198 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 

spite the lively resentment excited by the de- 
scriptions of Americans and their life in his 
American Notes and Martin Chuzdezuit. The 
explanation lay in the social stratum in which 
he almost exclusively found his inspiration. 
The life, aspirations, pleasures, and pains of the 
common people furnished all his material. These 
things the American masses could understand. 
From his stories they received a strong and 
lasting impression of plain people like them- 
selves in England, living real and understand- 
able lives down beneath the glorious but misty 
region where moved the lords and ladies, and 
the magnates of philosophy, art, religion, and 
politics, who were commonly the dramatis per- 
sona: of other writers of English fiction. When 
the Civil War in America brought tension of a 
most threatening sort between the two nations, 
the bonds of a common literature like this were 
of the highest service in averting rupture. 



CHAPTER V 
THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR AND ITS EFFECTS 

Despite repeated and notorious demonstra- 
tions of their error, idealists will doubtless con- 
tinue in the future to maintain as in the past 
that an omelette can be made without break- 
ing any eggs. Many of the good people who 
preached ardent abolitionism in the name of 
humanity were equally devoted to the propa- 
ganda of universal peace. The four years of 
desperate war that brought about the extinc- 
tion of slavery in the United States presented 
awkward problems of comparative humanity, 
and vexed the spirits of all the English-speaking 
people in whom hostility to slavery had be- 
come strong. Ill feeling toward Great Britain 
was manifested in both the contending sections 
in America very early in the war. Ill feeling 
toward both sections was manifested quite as 
early in Great Britain. The balance among 
these various emotions at any particular time 
depended to a great extent upon the relation 
then seeming to exist between slavery and the 

objects of the war. 

199 



200 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

Fighting between South and North began on 
the clearly defined issue of political independ- 
ence. Seven states, organized in a confederacy, 
claimed the rights and authority of a sovereign 
power, and expelled by force a body of troops 
that refused to recognize that claim. The rea- 
soning by which the claim was sustained had 
as its basis the familiar democratic dogma that 
government is just only when it rests upon the 
will of the governed. There was no room to 
doubt, so the Southerners held, that the peo- 
ple of the seven States willed to be governed by 
the authorities of the Confederacy, and not by 
the organs of the government at Washington. 
Whether the manifestation of this will had 
been constitutional or revolutionary, might be 
debatable. In either case, however, the result 
was unassailable. No power on earth could 
justly dispute the authority of that government 
which the people of the South had set up. 
President Lincoln, when he sought to assert 
the power of a government which the people 
had repudiated, was but treading in the tyrant 
footsteps of George III in 1776. 

The logical strength of this Southern argu- 
ment could not be disputed. Nor could, on the 
other hand, the strength of the reasoning by 



THE AIV ERICAN CIVIL WAR 201 

which it was cor t reverted on behalf of the 
North. The same cogma of popular sovereignty 
served the one cause as the other. The will of 
the people must prevail. But who were the 
people? Since democracy became in the later 
middle age a favorite dogma of radical philos- 
ophy, this question, Who are the people.'' has 
been the source of half the political woes of 
mankind. In 1861 Mr. Lincoln and the North 
maintained that the people in whom sovereign 
power inhered was the whole body of inhabit- 
ants of the United States; that no less aggre- 
gate possessed any of the attributes of sover- 
eignty; that this body, expressing its will 
through a constitutional majority, was supreme 
as against any individual or group of individ- 
uals in the United States; and that refusal to 
recognize such supremacy was simply treason. 
The corroboration of this doctrine in the last 
analysis was to be found in the dogma that 
the United States was a nation, and the gov- 
ernment at Washington was a national govern- 
ment. To the contemner of nationality and 
its representatives was ascribed something of 
the ineffable depravity that characterized him 
who sins against the Holy Ghost. 

When the beginning of the war in the United 



202 THE AMERICAN CIML WAR 

States obliged the other En';Hsh-speaking peo- 
ples to form some definite opinion as to the right 
and wrong of the disastrous situation, a judg- 
ment on the merits of the political and consti- 
tutional arguments was naturally very difficult. 
That a people possessed the right to determine 
what its government should be, had been a 
dogma of all English political philosophy since 
the Whig revolution of 1688. That a nation 
was entitled to independence and self-govern- 
ment, was, with certain qualifications adapted 
to the latitude of Ireland, an accepted maxim 
of British policy. But the application of these 
principles to the American situation was effec- 
tually barred by the very unanimity with which 
they were accepted by the contending sections. 
The South stood for sovereignty of the people 
(excluding negroes) and self-government for a 
nation, and stigmatized the North as a ruthless 
and bloodthirsty foreign invader. The North 
stood for sovereignty of the people (also exclud- 
ing negroes) and self-government for a nation, 
and stigmatized the South as a lawless aggre- 
gate of rebels and traitors. Elaborate reason- 
ing from history and law was adduced by both 
sides in support of their respective contentions; 
but this was even less successful abroad than at 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 203 

home In producing a consensus of opinion on 
the merits of the case. Political and legal 
theory was bankrupt in the presence of the 
fierce passions that dominated the American 
democracy, and recourse was had to other 
grounds when foreign judgment and sympathy 
were determined. 

In Great Britain the South had from the 
outset the favor of the leading classes — the 
great newspapers and the most eminent men In 
politics [and society. This was in some meas- 
ure due to the almost universal acceptance of 
the ancient doctrine that a state of great area 
and population, under democratic political in- 
stitutions, could not long endure. All think- 
ers of repute, for centuries in the past, had 
sustained this view, and It was Ingrained In 
the Intellectual apparatus of the age. France 
since 1789 was held to have confirmed the 
dogma. For three-quarters of a century the 
United States had thrived In defiance of this 
profound truth; but the secession of the South 
had at last justified the philosophers. As the 
South was but fulfilling the requirements of 
Ineluctable fate, she was entitled to the respect 
and sympathy of mankind. There was cur- 
rent at the same time In the upper circles of 



204 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

English society a conviction that the democracy 
of the South was much less pronounced and 
aggressive than that of the North — that the 
Southerner was more likely than the North- 
erner, on the average, to conform to the stand- 
ards of the "gentleman," both in his social and 
his political ideas and actions. Of the two 
republics, therefore, into which the United States 
was henceforth to be divided, the Southern was 
to be the more amenable to British influence. 
Moreover, the policy of the South in respect to 
commerce was sure to be more in accord with 
the liberal views of Great Britain. Free trade 
was the manifest preference and the obvious 
interest of the South, while the recent recur- 
rence of the North to protection, in the Morrill 
tariff of 1 86 1, revealed a menace to the pros- 
perity of British manufactures. 

The Achilles heel of the Southern case before 
British opinion was slavery. Hostility to this 
institution was immovably fixed in the feelings 
of all classes of the people. Among the aris- 
tocracy, intellectual and social, there was appre- 
ciation of the hard problem of the Southern 
whites in dealing with the great mass of blacks 
on their hands, and there was corresponding 
toleration of the institution as a transitory 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 205 

solution; but there was no sympathy with the 
suggestion of permanent utiUty in slavery and 
of a revival of the African slave-trade, nor was 
there any approval of the idea that the main- 
tenance of slavery was in itself a sufficient jus- 
tification of secession by the South. Hence 
the unceasing vigilance of the most acute South- 
ern leaders to avoid all discussion of the slavery 
question and to put the case of the South on the 
other grounds. This policy received much sup- 
port from the Northern government itself in 
the early days of the war; for out of regard for 
sentiment in the non-seceded slave States Pres- 
ident Lincoln's administration systematically 
kept abolitionist doctrine in the background, 
and based its appeal for support on the su- 
premacy of the nation over the State. It is 
not at all surprising that foreign governments 
adopted at the outset the view that slavery 
was involved only incidentally in the quarrels 
of the sections. 

One powerful element of public opinion in 
Great Britain adopted very early the view that 
slavery was the real cause of the war and that 
it was the duty of good people, therefore, to 
give their sympathy to the North. Such was 
the conviction reached by Cobden, Bright, 



2o6 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

Forster, and Mill, under the influence of Sum- 
ner and other extreme antislavery doctrinaires. 
This judgment gained no great support in the 
higher classes of society, but, through the ear- 
nestness and eloquence of Bright and Cobden 
especially, won a vast body of adherents among 
the middle and lower classes, and thus secured 
for Charles Francis Adams, the American min- 
ister, a moral backing for which he was pro- 
foundly grateful. It was not till after the 
formal adoption of the policy of emancipation 
by President Lincoln, however, that the maxi- 
mum influence of this particular element of 
British opinion was discernible. 

At the outbreak of the war Lord Palmerston 
was prime minister, and Earl Russell was 
foreign secretary. When in April, 1861, large 
armies were called into the field by both the 
United States and the Confederacy, privateers 
were commissioned by the South, and a blockade 
of the Southern ports was proclaimed by Presi- 
dent Lincoln, it was clearly time for the British 
Government to recognize the situation. Com- 
mercial relations with both sections were vast 
and intricate, and with privateering in full sway 
on one side and blockade proclaimed on the 
other, trouble tor British merchants and mar- 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 207 

iners was plainly in sight. What to do seems 
not to have caused any serious anxiety to the 
cabinet. The United States had followed the 
long-foreseen course of nature and had fallen 
in pieces. The pieces were at war with each 
other, and it was incumbent on the British 
Government to assume promptly the attitude 
and the duties of a neutral. Accordingly, on 
May 13, the Queen's proclamation of neu- 
trality was issued. In this the proceedings in 
the United States were referred to as hostilities 
"between the government of the United States 
and certain states styling themselves the Con- 
federate States of America," and all subjects of 
the Queen were notified that acts in violation 
of neutrality would bring heavy penalties upon 
the offender. 

Here began an Iliad of woes for the English- 
speaking peoples. By this proclamation the 
British Government recognized the Confederacy 
as a belligerent, with the rights and responsi- 
bilities ascribed to a power engaged in inter- 
national war. To the North, which considered 
the Confederates as mere riotous assemblages 
of rebels and traitors, the attitude of the Brit- 
ish Government appeared to be a manifestation 
of open hostility. It gave to the insurgents a 



208 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

dignity which they had not deserved, and 
encouraged them beyond measure. Not only 
in the press and in popular speech, where the 
law and practices of war were not understood 
in their details, but also in the despatches of 
Secretary Seward and other diplomatic proceed- 
ings, resentment against Great Britain was open 
and bitter. It happened that the offending 
proclamation was promulgated on the very day 
that the new minister from Washington, Charles 
Francis Adams, reached London, and before 
he had entered upon his duties. This, to the 
agitated North, proved that the British Gov- 
ernment hastened its action designedly, to avoid 
listening to the arguments against it, and to 
make clear beyond controversy a sympathy with 
the Confederacy. The distrust and hatred en- 
gendered by this proclamation of neutrality 
continued to determine for a generation the 
feeling of a great body of influential Americans 
toward the ruling classes of Great Britain. 

The alienation of the North from the British 
was not accompanied by any marked growth of 
friendliness between the British and the South. 
The Palmerston cabinet devoted itself to the 
maintenance of the most rigid impartiality 
between the two contending sections of the 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 209 

Americans. Earl Russell consistently refused 
official intercourse with the commissioners sent 
by the Confederate Government to England, and 
the instructions as to enforcement of neutrality 
by the local and colonial officials of the empire 
showed no special favor whatever for either of 
the belligerents. The South was indeed grat- 
ified by the proclamation of neutrality; but its 
chief hope of early success in establishing inde- 
pendence rested on the expectation of a more 
complete recognition by Great Britain — a recog- 
nition through the reception of its diplomatic 
representatives in their official character. The 
refusal of such reception in the spring and sum- 
mer of 1 861 caused mutterings and disquiet 
among the more ardent Southerners, with sub- 
dued curses of the abolitionism that was be- 
lieved to poison the sources of British policy. 
After the triumph of the Confederates at Bull 
Run in July, hope took on a brighter hue. All 
the reports from England teemed with evidence 
of unofficial sympathy with the South and 
confidence in its success. The impending cot- 
ton famine, which was expected to force the 
government to action by the ruin of Lancashire, 
was already beginning to make itself felt. To 
be quite ready for the change of attitude that 



2IO THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

seemed near at hand, the Confederate Govern- 
ment designated a minister for Great Britain 
and one for France, and despatched the two to 
their posts. Before they reached their destina- 
tions they contributed much to the cause they 
represented, but involuntarily and in a manner 
that was in no wise contemplated in their in- 
structions. After their destinations were reached, 
their contributions to the cause of the Confed- 
eracy were negligible. 

On November 8, 1861, the two ministers, 
Mason and Slidell, were forcibly taken from the 
British mail-steamer Trent by Captain Wilkes, 
of the United States man-of-war San Jacinto. 
The captives were taken to the United States 
and by order of the government put in con- 
finement as prisoners of war. Wilkes's action 
was entirely of his own initiative. Though it 
was a matter of general knowledge that the two 
ministers were on their way to Europe, and 
though there was a passionate desire in the 
North to prevent them from getting there, no 
orders for their capture had been issued. The 
news of their seizure was the signal for a rap- 
turous outburst of rejoicing in the North. 
Wilkes was officially thanked by the Secretary 
of the Navy and by the House of Represent- 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 211 

atives; his praises were voiced in countless 
unofficial ways by countless unofficial persons. 
In the swelling chorus of popular approval the 
dominant note was the efficient patriotism of 
the commander in seizing the traitors and 
thwarting their plans. Here and there was 
clearly audible, however, another note — the 
shrill, wild cry of vengeful joy that Wilkes, in 
doing his duty, had flouted the flag of Great 
Britain. Governor Andrew, of Massachusetts, 
at a banquet given in honor of Wilkes, pro- 
claimed it the crowning satisfaction of the whole 
affair that the commander "fired his shot across 
the bows of the ship that bore the British lion 
at its head." It is hardly doubtful that the 
rejoicing at the North owed half its ecstasy 
to the fact that the Trent was a British vessel. 

There were a few cool heads in the North 
that believed Wilkes's action unwise and unjus- 
tifiable by the law of nations. By these men 
the course of Great Britain was awaited with 
serious foreboding. Their anxiety was not di- 
minished by the news that reached America on 
December 12 of the overwhelming storm of 
rage and warlike fervor that swept over En- 
gland when the proceeding of Wilkes became 
known. Philosophical observers were rare in 



212 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

those days, but the situation must have ap- 
pealed with strange bewilderment to such as 
there were. Americans were splitting their 
throats with joyous approval of a harsh, crude 
exercise of the right of visitation and search; 
Englishmen were girding up their loins for war 
in defence of the rights of neutrals. The men 
of 1812 — Castlereagh, Canning, Madison, John 
Quincy Adams — would have been in sad straits 
to adjust themselves to this extraordinary re- 
versal of national roles. What explained it 
lay for the most part beneath the surface. The 
Americans exulted not more over the capture of 
two conspicuous domestic foes than over the 
incidental flouting of the British flag, finding 
in this latter a fitting retaliation for the hostile 
haste in recognizing the Confederacy as a bel- 
ligerent. The British, for their part, took high 
ground on the rights of the neutral flag less be- 
cause those rights were apparently assailed than 
because the apparent assailant was the Yankees; 
for there was persistently current in England 
a suspicion that the Lincoln administration in- 
tended to make trouble with her for the sake of 
improving its position in home politics. 

The course adopted by the Palmerston cab- 
inet left no room for diplomatic subtleties or for 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 213 

political finesse In the adjustment of the Trent 
affair. Three days after the report of the affair 
was received, a despatch was sent to Lord Lyons 
at Washington instructing him to demand the 
surrender of Slidell and Mason, and a suitable 
apology for the affront to the British flag. In 
case the demand should not be complied with in 
seven days, the minister was directed to close 
the legation and leave Washington. The trans- 
mission of these instructions was accompanied 
by open and strenuous preparations for war. 
Exportation of military stores was forbidden; 
arsenals and dockyards hummed with access of 
industry; great quantities of arms and ammuni- 
tion were hastily shipped to the North American 
provinces; most impressive of all, several thou- 
sands of troops, including a regiment of the 
Guards, embarked for the same destination. 

Confronting such a situation, the Lincoln ad- 
ministration had no choice of policy. To think 
of conquering the Confederates after Great 
Britain should become their ally, was beyond 
the bounds of sanity. Accordingly, the cap- 
tive envoys were put at the disposal of Lord 
Lyons, and were duly conveyed by a British 
war-ship back to the West Indies, whence they 
resumed their journey in triumph to England. 



214 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

In announcing compliance with the British de- 
mand, Secretary Seward did what was possible 
to save the face of the Americans. He wrote 
with one eye on the British fleet and the other 
on the Northern people. Such strabismic ad- 
justment of the gaze does not conduce to clarity 
of vision, and Seward's paper elicited scant ap- 
plause from the experts of international law. 
His contention was that Wilkes was wholly jus- 
tified in stopping the Trent and searching her 
for the Confederate envoys, but committed an 
error when, having found them, he omitted to 
bring the ship into port as a prize and secure a 
judicial condemnation of her for violating the 
laws of war by carrying contraband persons and 
despatches. The Northern people were as- 
sured, that is, that Wilkes must be disavowed 
not because he insulted the British flag, but 
because he did not in addition capture it. Earl 
Russell's reply to this despatch naturally con- 
troverted this view of the law of the case, and 
argued elaborately that there was no warrant 
in the law of nations for the interruption of the 
Trent's bona fide course from one neutral port 
to another. He reinforced his argument by 
the discomforting suggestion that the principle 
by which the act of Wilkes was justified would 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 215 

equally justify the search at any time, by either 
a Confederate or a Federal cruiser, of the Dover- 
Calais packet, and its conveyance to America 
if agents or despatches of the enemy should be 
found aboard. How utterly at sea the experts 
were in regard to the law applicable to this case, 
and how little the technical law had to do with 
the practical policy adopted, appears in the fact 
that the law officers of the crown, at almost the 
exact moment when Wilkes threw his shell 
across the bows of the Trent, gave their opinion 
that the course which he, all unknown to them, 
was actually pursuing was strictly conformed 
to the precedents of British practice.* Later, 
these same legal authorities modified their opin- 
ion and solemnly declared that the law required 
that the offending neutral ship on which con- 
traband persons or despatches were found must 
be taken to the captor's port and passed upon 
by a prize court — the precise ground that 
Seward took in his despatch and that Russell 
controverted in his reply. 

The surrender of Mason and Slidell was so 
clearly a case of hard necessity that Northern 
opposition to it was scanty. The hatred of 

^ C. F. Adams, The Trent Affair, in Proceedings of the Massachusetts 
Historical Society, XLV. 



2i6 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

Britain that it engendered was, however, gen- 
eral in prevalence and malignant in expression. 
Everywhere the thought was current: Great 
Britain has taken advantage of our weakness 
to browbeat and humiliate us. We will settle 
our domestic troubles and bide our time for 
revenge. Hamilcar's classic procedure recurred 
to many minds; and an inspection of London 
clubs to-day would probably reveal more than 
one elderly American dozing the pleasant hours 
away in happy forgetfulness of a Hannibalic 
obligation of enmity to Albion, assumed under 
paternal direction at the dim Christmastide of 
1861. 

The smart of defeat was not diminished by 
the taunts and jibes that issued in a broad, full 
stream from the British, Canadian, and Con- 
federate press. ** Swagger and ferocity, built on 
a foundation of vulgarity and cowardice, " was 
sweetly declared by the London Times to be the 
compendium of Captain Wilkes's characteristic 
qualities, and he was, it said, ''an ideal Yankee." 
Secretary Seward was described in hardly more 
complimentary terms, and was credited with a 
set purpose to pick trouble with Great Britain. 
The secretary's reputation as a reckless chau- 
vinist and an undisguised Anglophobe seems 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 217 

indeed to have had much influence in official as 
well as in popular circles, and to have played a 
considerable part in determining the ministry 
to a hard, brusque demand for reparation. 
Earl Russell was not naturally disposed to 
harshness, and his assumption of so uncompro- 
mising an attitude was apparently due to a 
purpose not to give Seward any chance to win 
popular applause. 

As to the Southerners, some pains were taken 
to show them that British policy was not chosen 
with any least reference to their interests. The 
arrival of Mason and Slidell in England was 
ostentatiously ignored by the cabinet, and The 
Times served semi-official notice on them in 
advance that they were not to assume the airs 
or expect the halo of martyrs. They could well 
afford, however, to submit with cheerfulness 
to such snubbing; for they were cordially re- 
ceived in aristocratic society, and they per- 
ceived on every side the currents of public 
opinion setting strongly in favor of the Con- 
federate cause. Throughout the year 1862 the 
utter failure of the North to gain any deci- 
sive advantage in the field confirmed the con- 
viction that the South could not be conquered, 
and that the vast sacrifice of blood and treasure 



2i8 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

in the attempt was inhuman and should be 
stopped. In Lancashire poverty and distress 
among the cotton-workers became extreme, and 
added a powerful practical argument in favor 
of steps toward opening the ports of the South. 
Yet the ministry persisted in its refusal to re- 
ceive Mason or to adopt the projects of media- 
tion and intervention that were from time to 
time seriously considered. Its rigidly correct 
attitude as a neutral in this respect resulted in 
a steadily growing hatred on the part of the 
South, which abandoned in the autumn of 1863 
all efforts at diplomatic intercourse. 

The alienation of the South from the British 
Government was not accompanied by any 
access of friendly feeling on the part of the 
North. On the contrary, the angry passions 
kindled by the proclamation of neutrality and 
the Trent affair found ever fresh fuel to main- 
tain the flame. During 1862 blockade-run- 
ning between the Confederacy and the British 
ports of the Bermudas and the Bahamas as- 
sumed large and spectacular proportions, and 
the cruisers Florida and Alabama began their 
destructive raids on the maritime commerce of 
the North. Popular sentiment, little versed 
in the niceties of neutral obligations, instinc- 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 219 

tively laid at Britain's door the responsibility 
for all the loss and humiliation due to these 
proceedings. Nor did the Lincoln government 
fail to make an adequate and proper appeal to 
the British ministry for a more rigorous and 
efficient enforcement of its own laws touching 
such matters. Charles Francis Adams had a 
task more delicate and exacting than that of 
either his father or his grandfather at the court 
of Saint James's, and the perfect success with 
which he performed it has been recognized in 
full by his adversaries. He brought Earl Rus- 
sell to realize that the Alabama should not be 
permitted to sail from Liverpool, though the 
earl's order to detain her arrived too late to 
serve its purpose. A year later, when a far 
more serious menace to the Northern cause was 
prepared by the clever Confederate agents in 
England, and two great ironclads were nearing 
completion by the same firm that built the 
Alabamay Adams went to the verge of a hostile 
rupture before he persuaded Russell to seize 
the vessels. The detention of the ironclads 
was a sickening blow to the hopes of the South. 
In the North it caused great elation, but it 
served at the same time to evoke the truculent 
vow that when the Union should have been 



220 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

made secure the failure of the British to detain 
the Alabama also should be put before them for 
explanation and settlement. 

Such was the disturbing spirit with which the 
North approached its triumph in 1865. The 
friendship and harmony that were conspicuous 
among English-speaking peoples in i860 had 
been supplanted by as unprepossessing an ag- 
gregate of evil emotions as the inferno of a four 
years' desperate war could be expected to pro- 
duce. The victorious people, with an army of 
a million men, a navy of five hundred ships, 
a crushed and helpless rival at its feet, looked 
round to see if any scores remained to be set- 
tled. Against every other branch of the English- 
speaking race the flushed and angry conqueror 
believed that it had a grievance to present. The 
West Indian colonists had sustained and thrived 
by the blockade-runners, through whom the 
Confederacy had preserved its life long after 
the end was assured. The Canadians and their 
associates of the Maritime Provinces had given 
refuge to Confederate agents who had organized 
expeditions of rapine and murder across the 
Northern boundary. In the African and Asiatic 
colonies of England the Alabama and other 
cruisers had received indispensable aid in their 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 221 

piratical enterprises. Even from remote Aus- 
tralia came eventually reports that the last of 
the Confederate cruisers, the Shenandoah^ had 
been enabled by illegitimate privileges allowed to 
it at Melbourne to destroy the American whal- 
ing fleet in the Arctic seas. Every item in this 
account — and by no means all the items familiar 
in 1865 have been catalogued here — was charged 
with bitterness, hatred, and a longing for re- 
venge. Nor were these emotions less conspicu- 
ous in the conquered South than in the victo- 
rious North. Recognition by Great Britain for 
the sake of cotton had been the rock bottom on 
which Confederate hopes were built. Refusal of 
this recognition left a feeling that Great Britain 
was wholly responsible for the ensuing catas- 
trophe, and not a few voices were heard from 
the ruins of the South declaring that, if a settle- 
ment of old scores with that power should be 
undertaken, Lee's veterans would not be slow 
to join Grant's in the enterprise. 

The vindictive feeling in the United States 
declined in aggressiveness as Napoleon's insolent 
challenge across the Rio Grande engaged atten- 
tion, and as the problems of reconstructing the 
South became more and more absorbing. Yet 
governmental action, legislative, diplomatic, and 



222 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

administrative, as well as movements of the 
popular spirit, continued to reveal the working 
of the latent hostility. The happy relations 
built up by Lord Elgin between the United States 
and Canada suffered hopeless damage. Even 
the ancient and indurated Rush-Bagot arrange- 
ment came into imminent peril of extinction. 
During 1864 Confederates from Canada cap- 
tured steamers on Lake Erie and also made a 
raid on a town in Vermont. After these affairs 
Secretary Seward gave notice that the Rush- 
Bagot arrangement would be disregarded after 
six months. In March of 1865, however, he 
withdrew this notice of abrogation, and an- 
nounced that the United States would continue 
to observe the terms of the arrangement. 

The Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 in respect to 
Canadian trade met with a less kindly fate. 
Complaints of unfairness in the working of the 
treaty became common in the United States 
only a few years after it went into operation. 
These gained in force and volume as the be- 
ginnings of tariff protection to manufacturers 
appeared in Canada. The revival of protec- 
tionism In the United States in connection with 
the war strengthened the foes of the treaty, but 
the impulse that was decisive of Its fate was 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 223 

apparently due to the anti-British feeling en- 
gendered by the incidents of the war. Congress 
directed by act of January 18, 1865, that the 
requisite one year's notice of abrogation be 
given, and accordingly the provisions went out 
of effect in 1866. By this action the unsatis- 
factory conditions as to the inshore fisheries re- 
vived, and a period of friction over this trouble- 
some matter was prepared. 

Still more directly and obviously the outcome 
of the changed feeling toward Great Britain 
was the support given to the earnest but rather 
absurd undertakings of the Fenians. Among 
the millions of Irishmen in the United States 
hatred of all things British was practically 
universal. Any project, however chimerical, 
for breaking the power of the "Saxon" was sure 
of wide sympathy and support from Irish- 
Americans. In the armies that fought the war 
of secession the Irish were conspicuous in both 
numbers and achievement. When the armies 
were disbanded many of these veterans were 
easily induced to join the Fenian movement — 
an enterprise directed with rather ostentatious 
secrecy to the establishment of an independent 
republic in Ireland. It would not seem likely, 
a -priori^ that the first overt step toward this 



224 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

end should be an invasion of Canada by an 
Irish army. Yet such was in fact what occurred. 
Considerable bodies of Fenians, with some ru- 
dimentary organization and equipment as a mil- 
itary force, assembled along the northern fron- 
tier of the United States, and in the summer 
of i866 crossed into Canada at various points. 
They were promptly chased back across the bor- 
der by the Canadians, and were then gathered 
up and sent to their homes by the authorities 
of the United States. It was not creditable to 
the government at Washington that such an 
attack on a neighbor from its territory was not 
prevented. In explanation it could only be 
said that the proceeding was so inherently 
fatuous as never to have warranted an expec- 
tation that it would be actually undertaken. 
Beyond this, however, was the undoubted fact 
that the minor officials from whom the earliest 
reports of impending trouble should have come 
had very little disposition to be vigilant in 
warding off trouble from Great Britain. The 
conviction that the British Government had 
not overstrained its vigilance in connection 
with the Alabama was thus producing results. 

Evidence that the grievance against Great 
Britain was actively operating on the American 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 225 

mind at the time when the Fenian disturbance 
was at its height is to be seen in the action of 
the House of Representatives in relation to the 
neutrahty laws. In the summer of 1866 the 
House passed by a unanimous vote a bill to 
repeal the prohibition, in those laws, of fitting 
out ships for belligerents. The bearing of this 
is clearer when connected with the suggestion 
made in debate that the "Republic of Ireland" 
be recognized as a belligerent. When, a year or 
two later, there was war between Great Britain 
and Abyssinia, an Anglophobe senator intro- 
duced and sustained with great vigor a resolu- 
tion recognizing King Theodore as a belliger- 
ent, and authorizing him to fit out privateers 
in the ports of the United States. 

In Ireland and England the Fenians man- 
ifested their existence through a long series of 
plots and ineffective lawlessness. Very many 
of those who were most active in these opera- 
tions had duly equipped themselves with the 
rights of American citizenship. At no time 
after the first weeks of 1866 were the British 
authorities in the least danger from the Fenians. 
The government had the situation well in hand, 
and the arrests of offenders went on without 
ceasing. Naturally, loud appeals for help came 



226 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

in an endless stream from the unfortunate Amer- 
ican citizens to Mr. Adams in the legation at 
London. The minister had little taste for the 
special kind of duty that this situation imposed. 
His chief function had become, so he wrote 
privately to Seward, to rescue Irishmen from 
punishment which in most cases they richly 
deserved. There was often at issue, however, 
in these cases a principle that was well worthy 
of most serious diplomatic attention. Ever 
since the great immigration from Europe began 
in the forties, the American Government had 
been under pressure to assert for its naturalized 
citizens the same rights in the land of their 
birth that were granted to native-born American 
citizens. Grave and well-founded objections to 
this claim were raised by foreign governments, 
who denied the right of expatriation. There 
was a very natural disposition in Great Britain, 
for example, to manifest special rigor in the case 
of an Irishman who used an easily acquired 
American citizenship as a cover for promoting 
in Ireland the cause of the Fenians. In the 
United States every such instance evoked a 
passionate Celtic clamor, whose influence ap- 
peared at every session of Congress and in every 
electoral campaign. To reflecting and well-bal- 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 227 

anced Americans the qualifications with which 
the claims of the naturalized citizens were to 
be taken were obvious; yet the incessant de- 
nunciation of Great Britain by the Irish and 
their friends inevitably strengthened the cur- 
rent of ill feeling that derived its portentous 
volume from other sources. 

While American feeling and policy were tak- 
ing the forms that have been noticed, what were 
the effects In Great Britain of the triumph of the 
North? Sir George Cornewall Lewis, a mem- 
ber of the Palmerston cabinet, recorded in the 
midst of the tumult the opinion that the civil 
war in the United States was a phenomenon of 
world-wide significance, not a mere local fray. 
The soundness of the judgment has been con- 
tinuously confirmed as the decades have passed 
along, but it was discernible very early in the 
effect of the conflict on the trend of British home 
politics. The division of sympathy In England 
as between the two contending sections followed 
pretty closely the cleavage between the social 
classes whose antagonism was crossing and con- 
fusing the old party alignment. The Duke of 
Argyll, sustaining the North, and Laird and 
Roebuck, sustaining the South, were indeed 
examples of deviation that served to emphasize 



228 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

the rule; but Bright and Cobden, leading the 
lower middle and working classes, with Glad- 
stone and Palmerston speaking for the upper 
middle class and the titled aristocracy, were the 
typical exponents of the respective sympathies. 
When the Emancipation Proclamation seemed 
to announce the extinction of slavery as the 
purpose of the North, a perceptible gain in favor 
for that section followed, and those humani- 
tarians who had committed themselves to the 
South were called upon to revise or explain 
their position. Their task was no harder than 
that of the Quaker, John Bright, who In 1854 
was full of scorn for the idea that there could be 
any connection between the slaughter of thou- 
sands and the cause of freedom, but ten years 
later found the slaughter of hundreds of thou- 
sands abundantly justified by the liberation of 
the blacks.^ 

As a matter of fact, a fundamental influence 
in fixing the sympathies of Britons was the 
more or less unconscious perception of a rela- 
tion between the American problem and their 
own. The liberalizing and democratizing spirit 
was steadily disintegrating both the old polit- 
ical parties. Those who welcomed the work of 

*Trevelyan, Life of John Bright, 226, 318. 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 229 

this spirit longed for the preservation intact 
of the American Union as the model of a great 
and prosperous democracy. Those who dreaded 
the approach of democracy were quick to see in 
the American war a proof of its weakness and 
futihty. 

When, in the course of 1864, the strangling 
and crushing of the Confederacy by the terrific 
power of the North became pretty clearly a 
matter of time alone, Southern sympathy in 
England ceased to manifest itself. Politicians 
and scholars who had portrayed with eloquence 
and learning the inherent vices of democracy 
and the impossibility of its application in the 
government of large populations, abandoned in 
silence the field of political theory and prophecy. 
The complete triumph of the North in the spring 
of 1865 was attended by a great impetus to the 
radical propaganda of Bright and his Manchester 
followers. The Whig and Tory aristocracy were 
badly discredited, and with the death of Lord 
Palmerston lost their ancient control over the 
government. For three years, indeed. Earl Rus- 
sell and the Earl of Derby maintained the 
nominal succession of the old order, but Glad- 
stone and Disraeli were the real representatives 
of the actual controlling power, which lay in a 



230 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

social stratum below that of Russell and Derby. 
This new power received its formal recognition 
in the British system through the Reform Bill 
of 1867, which gave a wide extension to the 
suffrage. It is hardly too much to say that 
the Reform Bill of 1867 was a direct product 
of the Northern triumph in the American war. 
Extension of the franchise was forced upon 
ministerial attention by Bright and the radicals, 
was undertaken in vain by Gladstone and the 
Russell government, and was actually enacted 
by the Derby cabinet, with the cynical Disraeli 
in the lead. This peculiar record of its genesis 
shows the wide basis of public opinion on which 
it was reared, and in this shows the far-reaching 
influence of the American situation. 

While the end of the war brought little abate- 
ment of the ill feeling in the United States 
toward the British, there was in England a 
somewhat pronounced reaction toward amicable 
sentiments even among those classes whose dis- 
tress at the success of republican ideas was 
deepest and most sincere. The tragedy of 
Lincoln's death had much to do with this move- 
ment. The most stolid Tory could not re- 
sist the softening effect of that most pathetic 
sequence — the divinely humane inaugural of 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 231 

March 4, the triumph at Appomattox of April 
9, and the assassin's bullet of April 14. No 
class of British society denied to Abraham Lin- 
coln a high place among the heroes of the En- 
glish-speaking race, and none could evade the 
truth, proclaimed by the whole story of his 
life, that he was the purest possible product, as 
well as the successful leader, of the American 
democracy. 

For the seven full years following the end of 
the war in the United States, diplomacy found 
engrossing labor in the task of restoring the 
concord that was so rudely shattered in 1861. 
Domestic problems of highest significance di- 
verted popular attention in large measure from 
a dangerous international situation. Recon- 
struction in the United States, federation in 
Canada and her British neighbors, electoral re- 
form and Irish disestablishment in the United 
Kingdom — these insured to the foreign offices 
much-needed time for their slow pacific processes. 
The ministers labored always in the conscious- 
ness of impending peril. It was the heroic 
age of the Hohenzollern monarchy, and German 
unity was taking shape at Bismarck's bidding 
out of the ruin of Prussia's neighbors. Den- 
mark was partitioned in 1864; Austria, Han- 



232 THE AMERICAN aVIL WAR 

over, and some of the smaller German fry were 
crushed two years later; all the world knew 
that war with France was coming next. How 
far the unifying energy of the new Germany 
would extend, was uncertain. That Great Brit- 
ain might become involved in war, if Holland 
or Belgium should be proclaimed indispensable 
to the territorial integrity of the German or the 
French nation, was obvious to all. When Den- 
mark was attacked in 1864 it had not been per- 
fectly easy to keep Great Britain out of the 
fray, though the non-interference policy had 
prevailed. The difficulty of such a policy in 
connection with aggression upon the Low Coun- 
tries would be insuperable. And what was 
clear to all who stopped to think at all on the 
subject was, that the day when Great Britain 
declared war would witness the adoption by 
the United States of a policy as to neutrality 
that would encourage the use of American ship- 
yards and ports by the enemies of Britain for 
the destruction of her commerce. Even in lack 
of formal announcement of such a policy Flori- 
das and Alabamas would be sure to escape the 
drowsy vigilance of the authorities, and to pur- 
sue their devastating careers under guarantee 
of the same non possumus with which Earl Rus- 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 233 

sell had met the reclamations of Secretary 
Seward. 

From the July day in 1862 when the '*No. 
290'* passed out of the Mersey on her "trial 
trip/' to become the redoubtable AlabamUy 
responsibility for the damage done by her to 
American commerce was formally and syste- 
matically charged upon the British Govern- 
ment by Seward and Adams. The long lists 
of vessels captured and destroyed that came in 
to the State Department at Washington were 
duly submitted to Earl Russell, with intima- 
tions that Indemnity would be expected from 
Great Britain. Because the operations of the 
Alabama were so far-reaching and so successful, 
they assumed very great prominence in diplo- 
matic as in popular discussions, and by the end 
of the war the term ''Alabama claims" was 
commonly used to designate the whole mass of 
complaints against the British Government for 
the favor that it was alleged to have shown to 
the Confederacy in violation of its profession of 
neutrality. The use of the term in this broad 
sense reflected and stimulated a feeling in Amer- 
ica that British delinquency was of a kind that 
could not be atoned for by mere financial com- 
pensation for the losses caused by the Confed- 



234 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

erate cruisers. The existence of this feeling and 
the bitterness with which it was resented in 
England give a clue to some of the most seri- 
ous complications of ensuing years. 

While war was flagrant, claims based on acts 
of the Alabama were presented by Secretary 
Seward, and rejected by Earl Russell, with 
monotonous frequency. A rather peevish re- 
quest of Russell that the annoying procedure 
be abandoned was followed by some curtail- 
ment of the arguments that accompanied the 
claims, but not of the lists of losses. In 1865, 
when the Confederacy was in ruins and the last 
cruiser had abandoned her career of destruc- 
tion, the two governments girded themselves 
for the diplomatic contest that was now pos- 
sible without the distractions of hostilities. 
The complete case for the United States com- 
bined the Queen's proclamation of neutrality 
with the government's derelictions of duty in 
respect to the cruisers as a comprehensive man- 
ifestation of partiality to the Confederacy, and 
a wrong to the American nation. The procla- 
.mation of neutrality, Adams argued, was pre- 
mature and unfriendly. In recognizing the 
insurgents as belligerents on the ocean before 
they had a single vessel afloat, her Majesty's 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 235 

government had acted in a manner that was 
without precedent in the practice of nations. 
This action in its essence created an ocean bel- 
ligerent instead of recognizing one that was 
already self-created. Thereafter the belliger- 
ent character on the ocean was maintained 
exclusively by vessels built, equipped, and 
manned in British ports, in spite of protests by 
the United States and demands that such viola- 
tions of neutrality be prevented. Freely con- 
ceding the desire of her Majesty's government 
to maintain a real neutrality, Adams declared 
that all efforts to that end had proved ineffec- 
tual, first because the laws were inadequate, 
and second because the government did not 
secure such change in the laws as would have 
healed the defects. In consequence of this 
failure of real neutrality, hundreds of American 
ships, with millions of dollars' worth of cargo, 
had been destroyed, and the commercial marine 
of the United States had been transferred to 
the protection of the British flag, insuring thus 
to the British people an unjust advantage from 
the wrong committed against a friendly nation. 
For such manifest injuries, due to the defects 
in the British law and the failure of the govern- 
ment to remedy them, the United States was 



236 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

entitled in reason and justice to reparation and 
indemnity. 

Earl Russell's response to these representa- 
tions was in substance as follows. When her 
Majesty's Government, on May 13, 1861, recog- 
nized the Confederacy as a belligerent power, 
it was in fact a belligerent, acknowledged to 
be such by official act of the United States Gov- 
ernment. The fact of belligerency was clear 
from the great population and territory con- 
trolled by the Confederacy, its complete govern- 
mental organization, its large armies and nu- 
merous fortresses, its undeniable exercise de 
facto of all forms of sovereign authority, includ- 
ing the issue of letters of marque. The recog- 
nition of belligerency by the United States was 
equally clear from the blockade of the Con- 
federate coast officially announced by President 
Lincoln before the 13th of May; and this 
view had been sustained by the Supreme Court 
of the United States. The British Govern- 
ment, if it did not recognize the Confederates 
as belligerents, would have been obliged to 
treat them as outlaws and pirates, and this the 
government was unwilling to do in the case of 
so large, well-organized, and valiant a popula- 
tion. The demands of British merchants and 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 237 

ship captains, moreover, for directions as to 
their rights and duties in the circumstances, 
made the government's prompt action necessary. 
As to later questions, Lord Russell stoutly con- 
tended that his government had enforced with 
fairness and impartiality the neutrality which 
was proclaimed. The Foreign Enlistment Act 
authorized the seizure of a ship that was proved 
to be armed and equipped, wholly or in part, 
in British jurisdiction, for the purpose of naval 
service for a power at war with a power friendly 
to her Majesty. The proof required by the act 
as preliminary to seizure was very difficult to 
obtain. Of nineteen vessels complained of by 
Mr. Adams, however, only five actually hoisted 
the Confederate ensign, and of these one never 
got into actual service, and another was seized 
but released after trial, for lack of sufficient 
evidence as to her warlike character. Under 
such circumstances. Lord Russell argued, it 
was idle to accuse the government of ineffi- 
ciency in the performance of its duties under 
the law. 

As to the ships that escaped the vigilance of 
the authorities, his Lordship held the methods 
employed by the Confederate agents to have 
been so skilfully adapted to their purpose that 



238 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

only the arbitrary and inquisitorial procedure 
of despotic governments could have thwarted 
them. To build a ship is the undoubted right 
of every Englishman. To set sail with a party 
for a foreign land, is equally the right of all. 
To ship cannon and munitions of war to for- 
eign destinations is also a right of Britons. 
When the ship and the party and the cannon and 
munitions, after leaving British waters, come 
together and coalesce into a Confederate cruiser, 
the British Government may feel deceived and 
flouted, but it cannot be held responsible for in- 
efficiency. On this principle every case alleged 
against Great Britain by the United States 
failed absolutely except that of the Alabama. 
In this instance evidence as to her true char- 
acter was pronounced by the law officers of the 
crown sufficient to justify her seizure, and 
orders to hold her reached Liverpool in the 
afternoon of the day on which she passed in 
the morning out to sea. Lord Russell was 
greatly angered at this peculiar coincidence, 
and there was no room to doubt the sincerity 
of his assurance of regret to the American min- 
ister. Yet he was wholly justified in arguing 
that the failure of duty by subordinates of the 
administration was no sufficient basis for the 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 239 

sweeping charge of bad faith and hostile ani- 
mus against the British Government. 

Lord Russell's discussion in 1865 with Mr. 
Adams culminated in a rather brusque rejec- 
tion of the proposal, submitted in a more or less 
tentative way by the American some two years 
earlier, looking to arbitration. The only ques- 
tions to be submitted to an arbiter, Russell 
said, would be, first, whether the British Gov- 
ernment had acted "with due diligence, or, in 
other words, in good faith and honesty," in 
maintaining neutrality; second, whether the 
law officers of the crown properly understood 
the Foreign Enlistment Act when they gave 
their opinions as to its application to the cases 
of the Alabama and other cruisers. To put 
either of these questions to the representative 
of a foreign government, would be incompatible, 
he held, with regard for the dignity and char- 
acter of the British crown and the British na- 
tion. "Her Majesty's government must, there- 
fore, decline either to make reparation and 
compensation for the captures made by the 
Alahama, or to refer the question to any for- 
eign state." 

The most that Lord Russell saw his way to do 
in the existing situation was to set up a joint 



240 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

commission to pass upon all claims arising on 
either side out of the Civil War, provided, as he 
explained with great care, that the claims con- 
cerned in the exploits of the cruisers should 
be excluded. This proposition was declined 
by Seward with no less directness than that 
which Russell displayed in declining arbitra- 
tion. 

It was soon evident that the attitude as- 
sumed by Earl Russell failed to win the sup- 
port of important elements of British public 
opinion. The maritime commercial interest per- 
ceived with ever-increasing vividness the peril 
to English trade that was involved in any re- 
laxation of neutral duties. Party leaders were 
embarrassed by the strained relations with the 
United States. Respect for the American Re- 
public was general, and admiration even was 
found in many circles where only contempt 
had appeared before Appomattox. With a 
realizing sense of the losses inflicted by the 
Alabama^ and the knowledge that orders to 
detain her were actually issued by the govern- 
ment, many voices were heard in high quarters 
declaring that there was ground for the com- 
plaints of the Americans, and that the best 
British policy would be to reach a settlement 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 241 

as speedily as possible, even if it cost consider- 
able money. 

Under the influence of these conditions the 
Derby cabinet, which came to power in June, 
1866, proposed a renewal of the discussion as 
to arbitration. Lord Stanley, the foreign sec- 
retary, avowed a willingness to submit to an 
arbiter the question whether the British Gov- 
ernment was so far responsible for the depreda- 
tions of the Alabama as to be bound to pay the 
claims of those whose property was destroyed 
by the cruiser. He declined absolutely, how- 
ever, to include in submission to the arbiter 
the question as to whether the recognition of 
the Confederacy as a belligerent on May 13, 
1861, was justifiable. As Seward was tenacious 
on this point and insisted that the conduct 
of Great Britain as a whole should go into 
the determination of her responsibility for the 
cruisers, arbitration failed again to be adopted 
as the way out of the difficulties. 

To the anxiety of the British cabinet to 
reach a settlement was added in 1867 a growing 
eagerness on the part of Secretary Seward to 
make such a settlement the capstone of his 
long public service, now approaching its end. 
Stimulated by these forces, diplomacy overcame 



242 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

the obstacles that had seemed insuperable. In 
1868, after Charles Francis Adams had been 
succeeded as minister by Reverdy Johnson, a 
general agreement on all the matters at issue 
between the governments was slowly worked 
out. The Irish trouble was first cleared away 
by a protocol, eventually amplified into a 
treaty, assuring to naturalized citizens of the 
United States, though originally British sub- 
jects, the full rights in Great Britain of native- 
born citizens of the United States, that is, 
recognizing the right of expatriation for which 
the American Government had long contended. 
A second protocol referred to arbitration a 
boundary dispute in the far northwest that 
had been pending since the last years of Bu- 
chanan's administration. The third and last of 
the agreements, the ill-fated Johnson-Clarendon 
convention signed January 14, 1869, provided 
for the Alabama claims. 

In this convention the controverted Issues as 
to belligerency and neutrality during the war 
were hidden away in a series of general provi- 
sions for the settlement of all claims upon ei- 
ther government for money compensation to cit- 
izens of the other, on account of transactions 
since 1853. A commission of four members, 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 243 

two appointed by each government, was in- 
trusted with the power to pass upon the claims 
by majority vote. When no majority should 
be obtainable an umpire should be selected, if 
necessary by lot; or, upon the demand of two 
commissioners, the umpire should be the head 
of a foreign state, to be agreed upon by the two 
governments. 

In this convention the British Government 
yielded all that which it had hitherto held to be 
impossible. Both its administration of its neu- 
trality laws, which Russell refused to regard as 
arbitrable, and its recognition of Confederate 
belligerency, which had been reserved by Stan- 
ley, were subject to the judgment of the arbiter 
under the Johnson-Clarendon treaty; for in the 
consideration of every claim the commissioners 
and the umpire were directed to base their 
decisions on the official correspondence of the 
two governments, together with one oral argu- 
ment on each side and such papers as the gov- 
ernments should choose to submit. So far as 
concerned the Alabama claims, these provisions 
put before the tribunal every aspect of the long 
controversy. 

There was, however, little hope, from the 
outset, that the concessive attitude of Great 



244 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

Britain would bring the desired settlement. 
The internal political conditions in America 
were decidedly unpropitious. A presidential 
election in November of 1868 resulted in the 
choice of General Grant to succeed Andrew 
Johnson in the following March. There was 
extreme antipathy, personal and partisan, be- 
tween the outgoing and the incoming admin- 
istrations, and nothing so dear to Seward's 
heart as ratification of his final treaty could be 
anticipated. More than this, there was a wide- 
spread feeling in the United States that the 
offence of Great Britain was not of a kind to be 
expiated by the mere compensation of private 
individuals for financial losses. Seward had 
once instructed Adams that the conduct of 
Great Britain during the war must be regarded 
as *'a national wrong and injury to the United 
States," for which indemnity to private citizens 
would be only the lowest form of satisfaction. 
The spirit of this declaration was not reflected 
in the Johnson-Clarendon convention, and the 
omission had much to do with the fate of the 
agreement. On the 13th of April, 1869, the 
Senate of the United States refused its consent 
to the ratification of the treaty by a vote of 
forty-four to one. 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 245 

The practical unanimity of this vote was even 
less significant than certain incidents that ac- 
companied the Senate's action. Though the 
session in which the treaty was considered was, 
as usual in such cases, secret, the Senate made 
public the speech of Senator Charles Sumner, 
chairman of the Committee on Foreign Rela- 
tions, whose views thus were impressed with a 
quasi-official character. In this speech Sumner 
rehearsed the tale of British unfriendliness to 
the United States during the war, much as it 
had been told often in the despatches of Seward 
and Adams. A shifting of emphasis by the 
senator, however, impressed a new character 
upon the discussion. He put in the foreground 
of his complaint the charge that the course of 
the British Government had been a wrong to 
the American nation, bringing upon it suff^ering 
and humiliation in addition to vast expense; 
yet for this public and notorious wrong to a 
friendly and kindred people no intimation or 
expression of regret had come from Great 
Britain. The injuries sustained by the United 
States could not be measured, Sumner argued, 
by the losses of individuals, nor be compensated 
by payments to individuals. British respon- 
sibility was to the American nation, and was 



t^ 



246 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

not to be limited by the property destroyed by 
the Confederate cruisers. As grounds for na- 
tional claims against Great Britain that were not 
to be ignored in any satisfactory settlement, 
Sumner included the shrinkage of the American 
mercantile marine through the transfer of ves- 
sels to the British flag for protection against the 
cruisers; the rise in the cost of marine insurance; 
and the cost of the war for the two years by 
which it was estimated to have been prolonged 
through the acts and negligence of the British 
Government. As to the money reckoning of 
the claims thus set forth, Sumner admitted that 
a figure was diflicult to arrive at. The direct 
losses by the destruction of private property 
he thought might total some ^15,000,000; for 
the indirect losses the suggestions that he made 
pointed to a sum of many hundred millions. 

Sumner's speech was received with vocif- 
erous joy by all the Anglophobes in the United 
States. The Fenians were deeply gratified with 
his exposure of British treachery, and prepared 
with eagerness for the revenge that they thought 
must be exacted. The great mass of average 
citizens whose antipathy to the British had 
been dulled by the lapse of years since the war, 
were stirred with the ancient wrath through 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 247 

the artful and eloquent recital of the old tales 
of wrong. The effect of Sumner's speech was 
magnified on both sides of the Atlantic by the 
fact that he had always been reckoned the 
chief among the small number of friends of 
England in American public life. That he 
should now be hailed in the United States as 
the leader of the Anglophobes, threw his En- 
glish admirers into consternation ^hat was al- 
most comical in its intensity. His suggestion of 
claims that would run up into the hundred 
millions was unsparingly denounced by all or- 
gans of British public opinion, and it proved 
a serious obstacle to the continuation of diplo- 
matic discussion of the general question. There 
is little doubt, on the other hand, that the 
emphasis that he laid on what he called the 
national claims and on the national sense of 
injury received, as distinct from individual 
losses, was an important influence in determin- 
ing the form of the ultimate settlement. 

Sumner's attitude was, in fact, the outcome of 
a deliberate purpose, for which British radical 
politics was in some degree responsible. We 
have seen that for several decades the feeling 
had been common and unconcealed in high 
quarters that the colonies were a burden to 



248 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

Great Britain and should be got rid of as soon 
as possible. Sumner's relations with Cobden 
and Bright, the most convinced advocates of 
this policy, made it very familiar to him. It 
was to Cobden's speeches, indeed, that Sumner 
was indebted for the catalogue of the national 
losses for which he held the British Government 
responsible. The great free-trader, when as- 
sailing the conduct of the Palmerston-Russell 
cabinet during the war, set forth in full detail 
the damage to the American merchant marine 
due to that conduct, and was scarcely less 
specific than Sumner in justifying a claim by 
the United States for reparation. In 1869 
Cobden was dead, but John Bright and other 
radicals were in the Gladstone cabinet, and the 
prime minister himself was well over toward 
the radical wing of the liberal line. Sumner's 
purpose, then, was to use Cobden's views on 
the Alaba7na claims to promote his views as to 
the colonies. The senator would put the claims 
at so enormous a figure as to make the settle- 
ment of them impossible except by turning over 
to the United States all the British possessions 
in the Western Hemisphere. Such was the prop- 
osition that he later advised Secretary Fish to 
make the basis of all further negotiation, adding 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 249 

the profound suggestion that this simple ex- 
pedient would remove for all time the tension 
on the Canadian frontier due to the activities 
of the Fenians. 

This project of Sumner's is illuminating as to 
the practical quality of his statesmanship. He 
assumed that the dismemberment of the British 
Empire, because it was considered as an ideal 
by politicians concerned in the internal prob- 
lems of England, could be demanded with im- 
punity by a foreign power as a sort of war 
indemnity for a purely constructive war. 

Hamilton Fish became secretary of state in 
the spring of 1869, and devoted himself from 
the outset to a serious but not ostentatious 
effort to overcome the ill effects of Sumner's 
speech and bring the negotiations back to at 
least as hopeful a situation as that in which 
Seward had left them. The Gladstone cabinet, 
with Lord Clarendon at the Foreign Office, was 
as eager as Fish to work toward an adjustment. 
On both sides, however, the difficulties were 
great. British susceptibilities had been so out- 
raged by Sumner's extravagant demands that 
any sign of concession to them by Clarendon 
would destroy the Gladstone government. On 
the other hand, American popular sentiment 



250 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

was keyed up to the pitch set by Sumner, and 
the senator's influence had to be reckoned on 
in opposition to any abatement of the extreme 
national claims. Nearly two years of secret 
and unofficial negotiations were necessary be- 
fore a plan of adjustment was hit upon that 
could be allowed to take official shape. In the 
interval the stars in their political courses had 
fought for harmony. Sumner, through a vio- 
lent personal and political quarrel with Presi- 
dent Grant, lost his influence with the support- 
ers of the administration, and was eventually 
deposed from his powerful position as chair- 
man of the Senate Committee on Foreign Rela- 
tions. The Franco-Prussian War, with its cloud 
of threatening diplomatic questions on the Con- 
tinent, gave a fresh impulse to the desire of 
the British leaders to be free from the harass- 
ing burden of American unfriendliness. Under 
these conditions the agreement was reached for 
the appointment of a joint high commission to 
meet at Washington and provide by treaty for 
the settlement of all the matters in controversy 
between the two governments. This commis- 
sion, after deliberations lasting from February 
27 to May 8, 1871, concluded on the latter date 
the Treaty of Washington that constitutes a 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 251 

noteworthy landmark in the history of Anglo- 
American relations. 

In the forty-two articles of the treaty were 
embodied provisions for the settlement of the 
Alabama claims; of other claims by British and 
American citizens arising out of the Civil War; 
of the various controversies between the United 
States and British North America — as to the 
inshore fisheries, navigation, and commerce — 
left pending by the abrogation of the Reci- 
procity Treaty in 1866; and finally of the dis- 
pute as to the ownership of the island of San 
Juan, at the far western end of the line fixed 
by the Oregon Treaty of 1846. 

As to the Alabama claims, the agreement 
embodied in the treaty signified great conces- 
sions on both sides in the interest of an amica- 
ble settlement. Great Britain expressed regret 
"for the escape, under whatever circumstances, 
of the Alabama and other vessels from British 
ports, and for the depredations committed by 
those vessels." In addition to this soothing 
admission that something disagreeable had hap- 
pened to the United States, the British Gov- 
ernment consented to arbitration in the full- 
est sense in reference to all the claims. Three 
rules were laid down as to the duties of a neu- 



252 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

tral government, and the arbitral tribunal was 
enjoined to base its judgment on these rules, 
though the British Government recognized them, 
not as a statement of principles of interna- 
tional law in force in 1861-5, but as prin- 
ciples that ought in the future to be adopted 
by maritime powers, and that Great Britain 
had, in fact, sought to live up to during the 
American war. The three rules defined the 
duty of a neutral government, in respect to the 
fitting out and supplying of war-ships, in such 
terms as to make it morally certain that judg- 
ment would be adverse to Great Britain on the 
case of the Alabama, if not as to other of the 
Confederate cruisers. The British Government, 
in short, not only assumed a somewhat apolo- 
getic attitude at the outset, but also submitted 
to be judged by principles that were not obli- 
gatory as rules of international conduct at the 
time of the acts concerned, and that insured 
an unfavorable decision. A proud and powerful 
nation does not put itself in such a position 
without potent motives. One such was obvious 
and unconcealed: the general adoption of rigor- 
ous rules of neutral duty would be very advan- 
tageous to Great Britain whenever she should 
become a belligerent. More influential than 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 253 

this selfish interest, however, was the desire, in 
no small measure purely sentimental, to be on 
friendly terms with the United States. The 
American democracy had proved in the severest 
of tests its fitness to survive, and the homage 
of a people and a generation in whom Darwin- 
ism was taking deep root was generously 
bestowed on the people who so opportunely 
illustrated the dogma of science. 

Not all the concession in the Treaty of 
Washington was on the part of the British. 
One point that had been strenuously insisted 
on as the original grievance of them all by 
Secretary Seward and Mr. Sumner was al- 
lowed by Secretary Fish to recede quietly into 
the background. This was the premature recog- 
nition of the Confederacy as a belligerent. Fish 
took the position that this action of the Brit- 
ish Government was evidence of an unfriendly 
spirit, but could in no sense be the ground of a 
claim for compensation. This admission was 
regarded as having a bearing on the general 
question of the national or indirect claims. 
These were not the subject of any reference or 
allusion in the treaty, and it was understood by 
the British negotiators that the American Gov- 
ernment had definitely abandoned them, as it 



254 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

was known to have ignored the demand of 
Sumner that a withdrawal of the British flag 
from the Western Hemisphere should be a pre- 
liminan* condition to any settlement whatever. 
As a matter of fact, the Americans had no 
desire to urge the extravagant claims that 
Sumner had made so conspicuous. The British 
commissioners, on their side, were without au- 
thority to consider them. Yet because popu- 
lar feeling was so sensitive about them on both 
sides of the water the negotiators avoided all ref- 
erence to them, and by this very excess of caution 
left room for a dangerous misunderstanding. 

The tribunal of arbitration met and organ- 
ized at Geneva, Switzerland, in the middle oi 
December, 1S71. It consisted of five arbitra- 
tors, appointed respectively by the govern- 
ments of the United States, Great Britain, 
Italy, Switzerland, and Brazil. The cases of 
the two contending governments were at once 
presented in printed form. That o( the United 
States was found to include, in addition to the 
claims for losses due to the destruction of ves- 
sels by the cruisers and to the pursuit of the 
cruisers, claims also for the loss involved in the 
transfer of the merchant marine to the British 
flag, the increased cost of insurance, and the 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 255 

prolongation of the war. That is, the indirect 
or national claims were laid before the tribunal 
along with the rest. Protests arose at once 
from every organ of opinion in Great Britain. 
To admit responsibility for that kind and degree 
of loss would mean, it was declared, national 
humiliation and financial ruin. The govern- 
ment and the negotiators contended that the 
wording of the treaty excluded the indirect 
claims from submission to the tribunal, and that 
such exclusion had been agreed to in conference 
by the American negotiators. The latter de- 
nied any such agreement or interpretation. 
Great Britain stood firm in her contention, 
however, and her agent was directed to with- 
draw from the arbitration in case consideration 
of the indirect claims should be persisted in. 
After many months of tension and of deep dis- 
tress among the friends of peace and amity, a 
wa}' out of the impasse was found that was 
acceptable to both parties. The tribunal itself 
declared that it did not consider itself author- 
ized, under international law, to award money 
compensation for such losses as those involved 
in the indirect claims. The American agent 
thereupon refrained from demands upon the 
arbiters for further attention to these claims. 



aS6 THE AMERICAN CIML WAR 

This happy outcome of the dispute was quite 
as pleasing to the -\nierican as to the British 
Government. Fish and his coadjutors had no 
expectation or desire that Great Britain should 
be mulcted in consequential damages. Sum- 
ner's speech had created a surprisingly strong 
sentiment in support of such mulcting, and it 
was problematical whether the administration 
could altord, in the year of a presidential elec- 
tion, to run counter to this sentiment. Ani- 
mosity toward the Southerners n\ as at this time 
a strong factor in the politics of the Republican 
party, and it fell in well with this feeling to 
disparage the South by contending that the 
remarkable prolongation of its resistance to the 
North was due solely to the aid it received 
from Great Britain. The rejection o{ the indi- 
rect claims by the tribunal of arbitration itself 
relieved the administration of all responsibility 
for abandoning* them, and passed without note- 
worthy effect on American public opinion. 

The judgment of the tribunal needs but cas- 
ual mention. In respect to three of the Con- 
federate cruisers, the ./.*u-:\;v:j, the FloriJj, and 
the Sh^riuriJojh, Great Britain was found to 
have contravened the three rules of neutral con- 
duct laid down by the treaty, and the damages 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 257 

due to the United States on account oi' the 
dereliction were assessed at 315,500,000. Sir 
Alexander Cockburn, the British arbitrator, 
dissented from the judgment of the tribunal on 
all but a single point, namely, that due dili- 
gence had not been used in ascertaining the 
character of the Ahihcima and preventing her 
departure from Liverpool. The dissenting opin- 
ions oi the Englishman were embodied in a very 
lengthy document, in which he expressed with 
unjudicial candor his contempt for the intelli- 
gence oi his fellow arbitrators and for the meth- 
ods and attainments of those who conducted 
the American case. Cockburn's caustic crit- 
icism found some reflection in the Tor}" press, 
and there appeared more or less of the once 
familiar diatribe against the Yankees. In gen- 
eral, however, the judgment was acquiesced 
in by British public opinion with good grace. 
Even Cockburn ended his offensive opinion with 
an expression oi the hope and desire that the 
arbitration would prove a potent influence in 
maintaining amity between the two kindred 
peoples. 

This was indeed the dominant note in Great 
Britain. The whole social and political move- 
ment of the day, with the now liberalized Glad- 



2S8 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

stone in the lead, was in the democratic direc- 
tion. Following the extension of the suffrage 
to the lower classes came the adoption of the 
secret ballot, to secure the independence of the 
new voters; and a great increase of state and 
rate supported education, to promote intel- 
ligence among them. Aristocratic privilege was 
summarily suppressed in one of its most cher- 
ished strongholds by the abolition of the pur- 
chase of commissions in the army. Disestab- 
lishment of the Irish church, and the Irish Land 
Act of 1870, whatever other factors played a 
part in their enactment, were for the benefit of 
the masses as against the classes. In the sup- 
port that Mr. Gladstone derived from public 
opinion for all these great measures it is quite 
impossible that no influence was traceable to 
the example of the American democracy, now 
so recently triumphant over the dangers that 
had been considered certain to insure its ruin. 
Conservatism could no longer point a warning 
finger, as in the early days of the war, to the 
fate of a nation that should follow American 
examples. France also just at this time re- 
newed her republican experimentation, and 
furnished the world again with illustrations of 
the working of popular government. In En- 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 259 

gland, however, only the "blind hysterics of the 
Celt" were discernible across the Channel, and 
the gaze must follow the trail of the Anglo- 
Saxon across the ocean to rest on anything 
really trustworthy. 

In the United States the announcement of the 
actual award attracted little attention or com- 
ment. It came in the midst of a heated elec- 
toral campaign, and was little available for 
partisan purposes. The Treaty of Washington 
had afforded to the Americans their most sub- 
stantial victory a year earlier, when Great 
Britain expressed her regret and agreed to arbi- 
tration. The carrying out of the treaty was 
followed with the somewhat languid interest 
of him who gathers up the trophies after the 
victory is won. 

Before the expiration of the year 1872 another 
trophy dropped quietly into the hands of the 
United States. The Treaty of Washington 
provided for the settlement of the San Juan 
water boundary by the arbitration of the Ger- 
man Emperor. By the treaty which ended 
the Oregon dispute In 1846 it was provided that 
the line between the United States and British 
America should be the forty-ninth parallel of 
latitude from the Rocky Mountains to "the 



26o THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

middle of the channel which separates the 
continent from Vancouvers Island, and thence 
southerly through the middle of the said chan- 
nel .. . to the Pacific Ocean." The channel 
in question was at one place about fifty miles 
wide and filled with islands, among which 
several navigable passages trending southward 
were discernible. The dispute was as to which 
of these passages was the "channel" through 
which the boundary passed. The island of San 
Juan, occupied since 1859 by detachments of 
both American and British troops, would belong 
to the one country or the other according to 
the result of the dispute. In October, 1872, the 
German Emperor rendered a decision sustain- 
ing the contention of the United States and 
assigning the island thus to the Americans. 

Two other arbitral procedures must be men- 
tioned before the unique achievement of the 
Treaty of Washington in this field is exhausted. 
One arose under the provision in the treaty for 
the adjudication by a commission of all Civil 
War claims, other than those known as the 
Alabama claims, for compensation by either 
government for losses sustained through its 
acts by citizens of the other. In the negotia- 
tion of this provision Great Britain agreed that 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 261 

no claim based on the loss of slaves by a Brit- 
ish subject should be presented. On the other 
hand it asked that the losses sustained by 
Canadians through the Fenian raids should be 
passed upon by the commission. This the 
Americans refused to concede, and the British 
withdrew the demand. What actually came 
before the commission was chiefly a large mass 
of claims by British subjects for the seizure or 
destruction of their property incidentally to the 
military operations on land and to the blockade 
of the coast. A few claims against Great Brit- 
ain were presented by Americans for losses sus- 
tained in the operations of the Confederates 
in Canada in raids across the frontier. The 
commission, on which the position of umpire 
was held by the Italian minister at Washington, 
rendered its final judgment in September, 1873. 
All the claims by Americans were dismissed, 
and out of the 478 claims by British subjects 
181 were allowed, with awards totalling some- 
thing over ^1,900,000. 

The last of the arbitral proceedings provided 
for in the Treaty of Washington related to the 
familiar old matter of the inshore fisheries. 
We have seen that the much-prized privilege 
of fishing within the three-mile line was con- 



262 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

ceded to the Americans by the Reciprocity 
Treaty of 1854 in return for the free admission 
of leading Canadian products into the United 
States, and that the privilege expired with the 
abrogation of the treaty in 1866. Friction be- 
tween the American fishermen and the authori- 
ties of the Maritime Provinces, such as had been 
common and troublesome prior to 1854, made its 
appearance again after 1866. Efforts to read- 
just things on the basis of tariff concessions, as 
in the Reciprocity Treaty, failed before the 
uncompromising refusal of the Americans to 
modify their duties. In the Treaty of Wash- 
ington an agreement was reached through the 
offer of the Americans to pay for the privilege 
of the inshore fishing in hard cash. This prop- 
osition was accepted, but the negotiators were 
quite unable to get together on the amount that 
should be paid. This question, therefore, was 
left to arbitration. The treaty provided that 
the inshore fisheries should be open to the 
Americans, and, on the other side, that Canadian 
fish and fish-oil should be admitted duty-free 
to the United States. This arrangement was 
to last for ten years, after which it was subject 
to termination on two years' notice by either 
party. The task of the commission of arbitra- 



THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 263 

tion was, therefore, to determine how much 
cash, if any, in addition to the free admission of 
fish and fish-oil, would make a fair compensa- 
tion for the privilege of the inshore fishing. 
The commission to whom the matter was re- 
ferred made its decision at Halifax on Novem- 
ber 23, 1877, and awarded ^5,500,000 in gold 
to Great Britain. This award was regarded as 
excessive and unfair by many well-informed 
persons in the United States, and its validity 
was questioned on technical grounds by some; 
but the government duly paid the sum and 
closed the incident. 

This Halifax commission completed the re- 
markable series of judicial proceedings of an 
international character through which the jolts 
and displacements caused by the Civil War were 
corrected and compensated, and the relations 
of the English-speaking peoples were restored 
to the plane of official and, in a greater degree 
than ever before, of real amity. The adjust- 
ment in respect to the fisheries was, of course, 
less closely and exclusively than the other 
arbitrations related to the Civil War. The 
difficulty that made the issue was destined to 
remain, as it had been for a century, a source of 
irritation and disturbance for an indefinite 



264 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 

future. It afforded at this time, as it had afford- 
ed eadier, and would afford later, a transition 
topic from controversies in which the mother- 
country was the chief protagonist against the 
United States to those in which the British- 
American provinces held the leading position. 
Not the least important of the results which are 
traceable in a distinct if not a wholly decisive 
way to the influence of the desperate war in the 
United States, was the great political transfor- 
mation in British America made effective by 
the creation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867. 
This was a capital event in the history of the 
relations of the English-speaking peoples of the 
earth and to it our attention must be for a time 
directed. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE GROWTH OF CANADA AND ITS 
PROBLEMS 

In the proceedings that resuhed in the Treaty 
of Washington of 1871 an important part was 
played by two prominent Canadians. Sir John 
Rose was the confidential agent of the British 
cabinet in the twenty months of secret di- 
plomacy at Washington through which negotia- 
tion of the treaty was made possible; Sir John 
A. Macdonald was one of the five British mem- 
bers of the joint high commission by which the 
treaty was actually concluded. Rose had been 
until very recently minister of finance in the 
Canadian cabinet; Macdonald was the prime 
minister of the Dominion. The participation 
of Rose in the affair was determined largely by 
his exceptionally wide and intimate business 
and social connections in all three of the coun- 
tries concerned, and by his amiable personality; 
the appointment of Macdonald signified the 
formal recognition by Westminster that the 

British-American commonwealth was entitled 

265 



266 THE GROWTH OF CANADA 

to share through its government in the imperial 
diplomacy that affected it. Complaints had 
always been made by the colonials that their 
interests were lightly regarded in the adjust- 
ments reached between the British Government 
and the United States. A Canadian represent- 
ative in the negotiations would shield the gov- 
ernment against such complaints, though, as 
Sir John Macdonald shrewdly foresaw, colonial 
wrath, if things went wrong, would not again 
be dissipated in long-range fretting against 
Westminster, but would fall with concentration 
and promptness upon his own devoted head. 
Despite the suspicion that his function might 
be primarily that of the scapegoat, he served 
on the joint high commission with force and 
efficiency, and strengthened pro tanto the pres- 
tige at home and abroad of the recently organ- 
ized Dominion of Canada. 

The union of all the British provinces of 
North America in a single governmental system 
had been contemplated as possible and desirable 
by thoughtful publicists for many decades. 
With the increase of population, the growth of 
intercourse,. commercial and social, and the im- 
provements in means of communication, the 
advantages of union became ever more percep- 



THE GROWTH OF CANADA 267 

tible. The impulse to its actual realization 
came, however, as much from without as from 
within the provinces. It was not a mere coin- 
cidence that the initial steps toward creating 
the Dominion of Canada were taken during the 
Civil War in the United States. 

Sympathy in Canada with the South was 
sufficiently common and sufficiently outspoken 
during the war to evoke much heated denun- 
ciation across the border. With the rumors 
and realities of extensive operations by the Con- 
federates from a base in Canada, the temperature 
of Northern comment became excessively high. 
The attitude of the Canadian authorities re- 
mained scrupulously correct, and the excitement 
pervading the press and platform of the North 
was properly discounted; yet there remained a 
feeling of uneasiness and foreboding as to what 
was going to happen when the titanic struggle 
should end. If the North should triumph, a 
war of revenge against Great Britain and its 
possessions was likely; if the North should fail, 
an effort to compensate for the loss of the South 
by expansion at the expense of Great Britain 
might equally be expected. In either case it 
behooved the prudent statesman to take all 
possible precautions for the care of the provin- 



268 THE GRO\\TH OF CANADA 

cial interests. Some kind of consolidation was 
obviously desirable for the security of the half 
dozen all but independent political organisms 
that made up British North America. 

It so happened that just at this time the 
legislative union b}^ which Upper Canada and 
Lower Canada had been brought into harmony 
in 1 841 reached the end of its usefulness. Party 
conflict, turning upon the antipathy between 
the French and the English races, brought 
paralysis upon the administration. A way out 
could not be found till a coalition of the dead- 
locked parties was effected for the purpose of 
instituting a new constitutional system through 
federation. The specific requirement in the 
internal politics of Canada was some readjust- 
ment that should satisfy the demands of the 
English element in the upper province for power 
proportioned to their now superior numbers as 
compared with the French of the lower prov- 
ince. Failure to satisfy these demands was 
likely at any moment to cause a revival of the 
sentiment in favor of annexation to the United 
States. The Americans were manifestly re- 
solved upon abrogating the Treaty of Reci- 
procity, in order to renew the commercial pres- 
sure upon the Canadians, at the same time that 



THE GROWTH OF CANADA 269 

the bitterness of the war-time was making a 
resort to arms far from improbable. Under 
these circumstances all the statesmen and other 
classes who were devoted to the British con- 
nection were stimulated to strenuous action. 

The Maritime Provinces meanwhile had been 
for some years discussing the idea of a union 
among themselves. Their motives were in some 
measure the same as those that were operative 
in Canada, and in some respects peculiar to 
themselves. A conference on the subject be- 
tween delegates from New Brunswick, Nova 
Scotia, and Prince Edward Island took place in 
1864, just at the time when the political situa- 
tion in Canada was most critical. The Cana- 
dian ministry, a coalition of George Brown, 
the ablest Radical, and John A. Macdonald, the 
astute Conservative leader, seized the oppor- 
tunity and effected the transformation of the 
conference of the Maritime Provinces into a 
more comprehensive body in which delegates 
from Canada and Newfoundland were included. 
The larger conference met at Quebec in October, 
1864, and formulated a series of resolutions out 
of which, after long and varied discussion in 
each province and at London, was shaped the 
constitution of the Dominion of Canada. The 



270 THE GROWTH OF CANADA 

British North America Act, in which this con- 
stitution found legal expression, was enacted 
by the British Parliament in 1S67, and the new 
system went into operation on the ist of July 
of that year. The acceptance of the new order 
by Canada was prompt and easy. To the other 
provinces, however, the appeal of the confedera- 
tion was far less strong. New Brunswick and 
Nova Scotia acceded only after a sharp conflict, 
and after the Fenian forays of 1866 accentuated 
the arguments of the reformers. Prince Ed- 
ward Island held aloof from the union until 1S73, 
while Newfoundland persisted permanently in 
her independence. 

A strong and conspicuous influence of the 
United States in the formation of the Dominion 
was to be seen in the distrust and fear that the 
great republic inspired; yet this was by no 
means the whole of the part played by the 
greater nation in the self-realization of the less. 
The constitutional problems of federal union 
that confronted the Canadians were in most 
cases those that had been the core of American 
history since 1776. Hence throughout the de- 
bates in which the constitution of the Dominion 
took form, the experience of the United States 
was continuously before the debaters. Amer- 



THE GROWTH OF CANADA 271 

ican history and institutions were as sedulously 
searched as those of the mother-country for 
precedent and for warning. Despite the un- 
friendly feelings in which the Dominion took 
its rise, its constitution is in the fullest sense an 
embodiment of the combined experience of all 
three of the great English-speaking peoples of 
the day. 

In the project for the union of the British 
provinces was involved the larger project of a 
national consolidation of the whole of the Brit- 
ish territory in America north of the United 
States. In correspondence with the expansion 
of the republic across the continent to the 
Pacific, the new Dominion was to include the 
whole vast region westward to the ocean and the 
Russian boundary. Nor was the slow and pain- 
ful process through which the United States had 
acquired its western area to be duplicated. The 
course of the imperial government was defi- 
nitely agreed upon before the British North 
America Act was passed. In 1868 the rights 
of the Hudson's Bay Company, in whom up to 
1859 the sole control of most of the region had 
for generations been vested, were taken over 
by the Dominion. Three years later the prov- 
ince of Manitoba was organized on part of this 



272 THE GROWTH OF CANADA 

territory as a new member of the confederation, 
and still another province, British Columbia, far 
across on the Pacific, also entered the Dominion. 
Thus emulously the new English-speaking na- 
tion duplicated, with whatever disproportion 
in numbers, the westward progress of its great 
neighbor on the south. The faithfulness of the 
duplication unhappily extended to certain un- 
savory details of politico-financial operations in 
the development of the new regions. In the 
United States the first transcontinental railway 
was completed in 1869. In Canada the pledge 
of immediate and energetic prosecution of a 
parallel enterprise was a feature of the proced- 
ure through which British Columbia became a 
part of the Dominion. A single year, 1873, 
witnessed in its early months the ruin of several 
fair political reputations in the United States 
by the malodorous exposure of the Credit 
Mobilier, and in its later months the downfall 
of the first prime minister of the Dominion in 
consequence of relations with the financiers of 
the inchoate Canadian Pacific enterprise. 

The consolidation of British North America 
into the Dominion was in itself an expression of 
the feeling of national unity, and it was fol- 
lowed by the steady unfolding of policies that 



THE GROWTH OF CANADA 273 

were in harmony with that ideal. Nationahty, 
as a basis of pohtical organization, has been 
historically a concept quite free from the 
limitations of exact definition. Community of 
ancestry, of language, of traditions, of customs, 
of religion, of geographic environment, of eco- 
nomic interest, and of intellectual ideals have 
been jointly and severally set up as the essential 
justification for the claim to the rights and 
privileges of a nation. No one of these could 
be predicated of the Dominion of Canada in 
1867. Under such circumstances it was no 
light undertaking for the 3,500,000 scattered 
people of the provinces to set out on the way of 
self-sufficiency. The initial requirements of the 
enterprise were obviously the assurance of po- 
litical and economic independence of the United 
States and the maintenance at all hazards of 
the connection with the United Kingdom. 
Awkward questions were involved from the 
outset in these requirements, but they were 
met with boldness and success. 

The constitution of the Dominion dealt with 
the most rancorous problems of race and relig- 
ion by disjoining the two old provinces of 
Canada and giving to each — Protestant and 
English Ontario and Catholic and French Que- 



274 THE GROWTH OF CANADA 

bee — a complete government of its own, sub- 
ject to the supremacy of the government of the 
Dominion. To counteract the well-nigh over- 
whelming economic pressure by which commerce 
and industry were made subject to the United 
States, every effort was put forth to develop 
railways running east and west. The Inter- 
colonial Railway, uniting Quebec with Halifax, 
a long-projected enterprise of both economic 
and military importance, was completed with 
imperial aid in 1876. The Canadian Pacific, 
delayed by the scandal of 1873, was not in opera- 
tion until nearly ten years later than the Inter- 
colonial. Along with these great monuments 
of national growth came the slow but sure de- 
velopment of that system which has been a 
feature of every new birth of national spirit 
in the nineteenth century — the stimulation of 
industry by a protective tariff. In 1878 Sir 
John A. Macdonald, after five years of exclu- 
sion from power following his downfall on the 
Canadian-Pacific affair, won a great popular 
triumph on the clearly defined issue of pro- 
tection, and at once put the new policy into 
operation. The United States was just at this 
time emerging from the fiscal chaos of the Civil 
War. Specie payments superseded the irre- 



THE GROWTH OF CANADA 275 

deemable paper currency, and the refunding of 
the huge war debt rendered possible far-reach- 
ing readjustments in revenue and taxation. 
This situation brought the question of the tar- 
iff to the foreground in poHtics and demanded 
the judgment of the people as to maintaining 
the high protection that had been established 
through the fiscal exigencies of the war. Though 
the principle was less decisively settled for 
many years than in the Dominion, the practical 
issue was the same. As Canada introduced the 
protective tariff, the United States retained it. 
Thus by the opening of the ninth decade of 
the century the two English-speaking peoples 
of America had reverted to the restrictive com- 
mercial and industrial system that had been 
dropped with much parade of finality in the 
fifth decade. Economic independence of Great 
Britain was the chief end that determined the 
policy of the United States; economic independ- 
ence of the United States was the chief end 
that determined the policy of Canada. In 
each case the experiment was costly, but far 
more so to the Dominion than to the republic. 
No small sacrifice to the national ideal was re- 
quired in resisting the lure of trade, transporta- 
tion, and financial advantage to the southward 



276 THE GROWTH OF CANADA 

and laboriously building up a purely Canadian 
economy. The spirit that sustains such sac- 
rifices, however noble and exalted it undoubtedly 
may be in some aspects, is notoriously not the 
spirit that most promotes cordial friendships 
among neighboring peoples. The simultaneous 
renascence of protectionism in the United States 
and Canada had a very close relation to the 
friction that became spectacular in the eighties 
and the early nineties. The immediate source 
of the friction was the very familiar old ques- 
tion of the inshore fisheries on the Atlantic 
coast, with later a less familiar but no less troub- 
lesome dispute over the seal fisheries of the far 
northwestern ocean. 

The Treaty of Washington of 1871, as we 
have seen, admitted Americans to the inshore 
fisheries on the coast of the Dominion, in return 
for the admission of fish and fish-oil free of 
duty to the United States and such additional 
compensation as should be awarded by arbi- 
trators. This arrangement went into effect July 
I, 1873, and a year later Newfoundland became 
a party to it. The award of ^5,500,000 by 
the Halifax commission practically sounded the 
knell of this arrangement. The amount was 
deemed exorbitant by most Americans com- 



THE GROWTH OF CANADA 277 

petent to judge, the position officially taken 
by the government being that the privilege of 
the inshore fishing was desirable for Americans, 
not at all for economic advantage, but merely 
to remove a cause of international friction. 
This latter purpose was not wholly achieved. 
In 1878, at Fortune Bay, Newfoundland, an 
American fishing crew was mobbed by local 
residents for disregarding the prohibition to 
ply the trade on Sunday. The British Govern- 
ment ultimately granted an indemnity to the 
Americans, but the question whether local 
provincial legislation was seriously to affect 
the rights based on treaties remained not alto- 
gether clear. 

The definitive committal of both Canada and 
the United States to protectionism confirmed 
the fate of the fisheries arrangement. The 
fish-packing interests of New England entered 
strong and continuous protests against the sac- 
rifice of their rights by the free admission of 
Canadian fish, while other products of the 
Dominion were subject to heavy duties. When 
the ten years expired for which the fisheries 
articles were to run. Congress, with little or no 
opposition, directed the President to give the 
requisite two years' notice of the abrogation of 



278 THE GROWTH OF CANADA 

the articles. Accordingly, they ceased to be 
operative on July i, 1885, and the way was 
open for renewal of the ancient friction. A 
provisional arrangement by which the Amer- 
icans were not to be molested in their custom- 
ary pursuits for the season of 1885 secured 
peace for that year; but with the next fishing- 
season troubles promptly developed that se- 
verely strained the resources of diplomacy. 
The authorities of the Dominion, in whose 
jurisdiction the police of the shores and the 
enforcement of the customs laws now lay, pro- 
ceeded to a merciless enforcement of the rules 
that operated to hamper the enterprise of the 
American fishermen. Under these rules fishing- 
vessels were forbidden to enter Canadian ter- 
ritorial waters except for shelter, repairs, wood 
or water. Many a captain took the chances of 
trouble by seeking under cover of these excep- 
tions to renew the supply of bait on which the 
success of his deep-sea fishing depended. The 
zeal of the Canadian guard-boats was as active 
as that of the American fishermen, and frequent 
seizures were made of the alleged off^enders. 
Complaints and recriminations in the press and 
in the legislatures of the two countries assumed 
great scope and bitterness. It was charged in 



THE GROWTH OF CANADA 279 

the United States that the sole animus of the 
Canadian procedure was the desire to force 
concessions to Canadian goods in the tariff. In 
Canada, on the other hand, it was charged that 
the agitation across the border was designed to 
break down the Canadian tariff in the interest 
of American manufactures. That there was an 
element of truth in both charges did not ma- 
terially relieve the situation. 

The tension due to this matter lasted till af- 
ter the presidential election of 1888. Only the 
season of 1886, however, presented incidents 
of a really serious character. As a consequence 
of these incidents the American Congress, in its 
following session, enacted a retaliatory law, au- 
thorizmg the President, in case of further ill 
treatment of the fishermen, to exclude from 
American waters and ports the vessels and com- 
modities of the Dominion. No action was ever 
taken, however, under the authority conferred 
by this act. The lessons of 1886 produced a 
less militant attitude on the part of both the 
American fishermen and the Canadian revenue 
officers. Methods were devised through which 
the difficulties that arose between them could 
be and were promptly adjusted. Yet on ac- 
couiit of the partisan political conditions pre- 



28o THE GROWTH OF CANADA 

vailing, especially in the United States, the 
significance of every frictional episode was 
systematically exaggerated, and the permanent 
diplomatic settlement of all the controversies 
was prevented. A treaty was actually con- 
cluded, February 15, 1888, the terms of which 
provided a full and equitable provision for all 
the doubtful points that had arisen. The 
Senate of the United States refused to approve 
it, for reasons which, so far as the public debate 
on the question may be assumed to reveal them, 
related much more to President Cleveland's 
candidacy for re-election than to the merits of 
the fisheries question. Pending the action of 
the Senate, a modus vivendi for two years was 
agreed to by the governments, under the terms 
of which licenses to trade for fishing-supplies in 
the British ports were granted for a price to the 
American fishermen, and they were absolved 
from burdensome customs regulations. Though 
the treaty failed, the terms of this modus con- 
tinued to govern the situation by the tacit 
consent of all the parties concerned, and fur- 
ther trouble was for the time avoided. 

The friction after 1885 over the fisheries had 
far-reaching effects. It contributed to the de- 
velopment of an anti-British sentiment in the 



THE GROWTH OF CANADA 281 

United States that reached a serious climax 
a decade later. The feeling at first excited by 
the seizure of the American fishermen was di- 
rected naturally against the Canadians. Later, 
despite the unconcealed and eager efforts of 
the British imperial government to bring about 
a satisfactory accommodation, a truculent spirit 
in respect to England became increasingly 
manifest throughout the United States. It was 
wide-spread rather than deep, and it received 
nourishment from a number of casual circum- 
stances. 

The home politics of Great Britain contrib- 
uted something. It was in 1886 that Mr. 
Gladstone's Irish policy wrecked the Liberal 
Party and brought Lord Salisbury in for a long 
tenure of the premiership. The Parnell move- 
ment for home rule had for years attracted 
much sympathy in the United States, even out- 
side the circle of Irish-Americans from whom it 
drew so much of its financial support. When 
Gladstone gave way to the pressure of the 
Irish and introduced his first Home Rule Bill, 
the action presented itself to very many Amer- 
icans as another step in the democratic direc- 
tion which he had followed, notably in the 
extension of the suffrage in 1884. The failure 



1^ THE GROWTH OF CANADA 

of ilie ImH and the acoesskwi of the Marquis <3f 
SAlisbury to po^'cr appeAred to denote a great 
triumph of teactksci. Lord Salisbuiy's neputa- 
tkm in America \^^as that of a case-hardened 
aristocrat, xiith no faculty of aristocratic reserve 
when the caustic delineation d his adxxrsaries 
was concerned. His opinions and expressions 
concerning the United States had been noto- 
riously contemptuous^. It was easy, therefore^ 
for those who >^'ere interested, to strengthen the 
presumption that the British policy in the mat- 
ter of the fisheries was but a manifestarion of 
the unfriendly spirit which the prime minister 
was disposed to promote. 

The same disturbing end was furthered by the 
condition of party politics in the United States, 
Control of the gox^emment was div'ided between 
the two great parties. President Cle\^and 
was a Democrat; the Senate was by a small 
majority contrcdled by the Republicans, In 
the country at large the voters ifvcvt x^rj^ evenly 
di^^ded, and the struck of the politicians for 
the support <^ those xxhose preferences could 
be influenced by anti-British prejudice x^"as x^iy 
keen. As the campaign ci iSSS approached. 
President Qexxland, in a dramatic manner, 
brought the tariff into the foreground as the 



THE GRO\VTH OF CANADA 283 

chief issue between the parties, and committed 
the Democrats to the policy of aboHshing the 
protective system. The RepubHcans, adopt- 
ing formally the defence of protection, strove 
with energy and much success to attach to 
their adversaries the odium of devotion to 
"British free trade." It was freely asserted 
that English manufacturers were actively as- 
sisting the Democrats. By a trick that any- 
thing above infantile sagacity would have 
detected, the British minister at Washington, 
Sir L. S. Sackville West, was actually induced 
to write a letter to an unknown correspondent 
advising him to vote the Democratic ticket as 
the most advantageous to British interests. 
At the climax of the campaign the letter was 
published and was hailed by the Republicans 
as conclusive proof of their allegations concern- 
ing the relations of the English with the Demo- 
crats. President Cleveland demanded the re- 
call of Sackville West. Lord Salisbury refused. 
Thereupon the minister received his passports, 
and his post was left vacant for many months 
by his government. The Republicans, mean- 
while, triumphed in the elections, and under the 
presidency of Mr. Harrison entered upon a 
policy of extreme and aggressive protectionism 



284 THE GROWTH OF CANADA 

through the enactment of the famous McKinley 
Bill. 

In addition to this policy, the Harrison ad- 
ministration brought to the front a personality 
which gave small promise of better relations 
with any foreign power. Mr. James G. Blaine 
became secretary of state. He brought to 
that office the reputation of one who would 
assert with exceptional vigor the rights and 
claims of the United States. His political fol- 
lowing included a group of Irish-Americans to 
whom the separation of Ireland from Great 
Britain was an end that justified any means. 
His public career teemed with incidents that 
had rasped the feelings of Britons and Cana- 
dians as effectively as Lord Salisbury had rasped 
the Americans. The conjunction of these two 
men at the head of the foreign offices boded ill 
for amity among the English-speaking peoples. 

It was expected that the accession of the 
Harrison administration would be followed by 
a renewal of the tension concerning the north- 
eastern fisheries. Forebodings in this respect 
proved groundless. No settlement of the dis- 
puted questions of right was indeed arrived at, 
but careful and considerate conduct by both 
fishermen and authorities made serious clashes 



THE GROWTH OF CANADA 285 

avoidable. On the other side of the continent, 
however, In the waters of the northern Pacific, 
a situation had arisen In which, with reversed 
roles, Americans and Canadians were In dan- 
gerous controversy. 

In the summer of 1886, at the very time when 
the Canadian revenue cutters were giving most 
trouble to the cod and mackerel fishermen of 
New England, American revenue cutters be- 
gan to make trouble for the seal-hunters of 
British Columbia. The laws of the United 
States prohibited the killing of fur-seals in 
Alaska except by a company to whom the right 
had been leased of taking a limited number of 
skins, by carefully restricted methods, on the 
Pribllof Islands In Behring Sea. These Is- 
lands were the resort of vast numbers of the 
animals each summer for breeding. Hunting 
of the seals on the high seas, beyond the three- 
mile line, was carried on actively by vessels of 
American, British, Japanese, and other nation- 
alities. The methods employed by these deep- 
sea hunters were wasteful of seal life, and were 
alleged to be the chief cause of a great decline 
in the number of animals frequenting the 
breeding-grounds. At the Instance of the com- 
pany whose interests were thus threatened, 



286 THE GROWTH OF CANADA 

the American authorities in Alaska proceeded 
to assert far-reaching powers for controlUng 
the situation. In 1886 three, and in the next 
summer four, British sealers were seized by 
American revenue cutters in Behring Sea, at 
distances from the shore varying from fifteen 
to one hundred and fifteen miles, on the charge 
of violating the law forbidding the killing of 
seals in Alaska. The court of the district up- 
held the seizures and inflicted penalties on the 
crews of the vessels, taking the ground that 
Behring Sea was mare clausum, and that so 
much of it as lay to the eastward of the water 
boundary described in the treaty of cession by 
Russia was subject to the territorial jurisdiction 
of the United States. 

Against this whole procedure the British 
Foreign Office entered vigorous protests. There 
was involved a claim to control over a stretch 
of open ocean some seven hundred miles in 
width — and that by a government which was 
vehemently objecting to the exercise on the 
Atlantic coast of like control over ocean spaces 
but a paltry forty miles wide. The administra- 
tion at Washington refrained from pressing the 
contention on which the Alaskan court rested, 
and ordered the release of the seized vessels. On 



THE GROWTH OF CANADA 287 

Other grounds, however, the preservation of the 
seals from extinction was taken up as a duty of 
general concern to civilized nations, and on the 
proposition of Secretary Bayard a project of 
joint action for the protection of the seals was 
agreed to in its general features by the British 
and other governments. This plan looked to a 
prohibition of pelagic sealing in Behring Sea. 
Before the adjustment of the details could be per- 
fected, in May, 1888, the negotiations were 
somewhat abruptly suspended by the British 
Government at the request of the Canadian 
authorities. The sealing interests of British 
Columbia had by this time impressed upon the 
Dominion government the fear that an impor- 
tant industry was about to be sacrificed for the 
benefit of an American monopoly. Pointblank 
issue was made against the claim that the 
Pribilof seal herd was seriously decreasing in 
numbers, and it was stoutly maintained that if 
there was any perceptible diminution, it was 
attributable to the methods of the American 
monopoly rather than to pelagic hunting. 

To the disputes as to the facts was added, 
as an influence in the sudden change of attitude 
by the British, the coincident rejection by the 
American Senate of the draft treaty touching 



288 THE GRO\\TH OF CANADA 

the northeastern fisheries.^ Both controversies 
thus went over to be taken up by the successor 
of the Cleveland administration. In this situa- 
tion there was no room to question the impor- 
tance of the Canadian governmental and un- 
official sentiment. Sir Charles Tupper, the 
shrewd and experienced associate of Sir John 
Macdonald in the Dominion cabinet, was a 
member of the commission that negotiated the 
unratified treaty of 1888, and was the official 
through whom the communication was made 
that put an end to the negotiations as to the 
seals. The oft-reiterated complaint that Cana- 
dian interests were sacrificed through failure of 
the imperial government to make itself informed 
about them could have no place in connection 
with these incidents. On the contrary, the 
Americans manifested from time to time im- 
patience and even stronger feeling because of 
the time lost, as they declared, by the care of 
the British Foreign Office to insure that its 
every step should receive the vise of the Do- 
minion cabinet. 

In the summer of 1889 the activity of the 
revenue cutters in Behring Sea, which was sus- 
pended during the preceding summer, was re- 

' See above, p. 280. 



THE GROWTH OF CANADA 289 

sumed. Nine British sealers were visited and 
six of them were seized. This precipitated a 
fervid diplomatic correspondence between Sec- 
retary Blaine and Lord Salisbury. His Lord- 
ship stood firm on the ground that British ves- 
sels must not be molested on the high seas. 
The secretary, dropping the claim of mare 
clausuMy justified the action of the United 
States on the ground that pelagic hunting under 
the circumstances was contra bonos mores — in 
contravention of the general interest and wel- 
fare of mankind — and was therefore to be sup- 
pressed, like piracy, without regard to the nor- 
mal freedom of the seas. By degrees, however, 
the debate worked around to the proposal of 
arbitration, with a provisional cessation of the 
killing of seals. A modus vivendi was arranged 
for the seasons of 1891 and 1892, under which 
taking furs was prohibited, and experts were 
set to work to ascertain all the facts of the 
situation. Meanwhile a treaty of arbitration 
was signed February 29, 1892, and duly ratified. 
The tribunal of arbitration consisted of two 
Americans, two representatives of Great Britain, 
and one member appointed by the French, the 
Italian, and the Swedish Governments respect- 
ively. It was entirely in keeping with the 



290 THE GROWTH OF CANADA 

trend of imperial relations that one of the 
British representatives should be Sir John S. D. 
Thompson, Canadian minister of justice, and 
that the responsibilities of British agent should 
be assigned to Sir Charles Tupper. The tri- 
bunal met for its first session at Paris in Feb- 
ruary, 1893, and rendered its decision on the 
15th of August following. On all the points 
formally submitted for adjudication the de- 
cision was adverse to the contention of the 
United States. It was held that that power, in 
taking over Alaska from Russia, acquired no 
exclusive jurisdiction in Behring Sea and no 
exclusive rights in the seal fisheries therein; 
and that the American Government had no 
right of protection or property in the fur-seals 
that frequented the Pribilof Islands when the 
animals were outside the three-mile limit. At 
the same time the tribunal formulated regula- 
tions and restrictions under which, for the pres- 
ervation of the herd, pelagic sealing ought to 
be carried on, and these rules were duly enacted 
into law by both governments for their respect- 
ive subjects. Thus the maintenance of bonos 
mores on the high seas was made a matter of 
international co-operation, while the American 
Government, for its ambitious undertaking to 



THE GROWTH OF CANADA 291 

exercise that lofty function unaided, was obliged 
to pay something like half a million dollars in 
damages to the seized British sealers. 

The settlement of this dispute by arbitration 
gave much satisfaction to the special friends 
of peace among English-speaking peoples. Not 
that the controversy over the seals had seri- 
ously threatened war. Feeling in relation to it, 
whether in governmental circles or in the public 
at large, never became generally bellicose in 
either Canada, Great Britain, or the United 
States. Yet it doubtless did contribute a share, 
however small, to the stimulation of the intense 
nationalistic susceptibilities that were manifest 
in both the Dominion and the republic. 

Pride of strength and of achievement became 
peculiarly demonstrative in the United States 
during the decade of the eighties. The cause 
can be but uncertainly detected amid the 
obscurities of national psychology, but the 
effects are patent and unmistakable. Through 
press and pulpit and platform was revealed a 
consuming sense of power and a deep craving 
to make it felt, and to extort recognition of it 
from other peoples. For three decades the prob- 
lems of slavery and civil war had absorbed the 
physical and intellectual strength of the nation. 



292 THE GROWTH OF CANADA 

These had passed and a new generation de- 
manded new opportunities for testing its forces. 
The population exceeded 50,000,000; the ma- 
terial resources of the land were being revealed 
in ever-increasing variety and volume; by the 
progress of settlement the vast interior spaces 
of the continent were peopled and organized, 
till at the decade's end the full-fledged States 
of the Union stretched in unbroken series three 
thousand miles from ocean to ocean. It was 
an imposing political fabric, and the citizen 
who admired it from within might be pardoned 
for insisting on tributes of admiration from 
without. 

This national pride found something of sat- 
isfaction during the eighties in the beginnings 
of a fleet that should conform to the standards 
of the time. Likewise expressive of the feeling 
was the popular approval of the policy which 
secured to the United States, after a somewhat 
acrimonious tilt with Germany, a substantial 
foothold in the far-distant Samoan Islands. 
This initial excursion into the field of extra- 
American dependencies was stimulated by the 
exciting competition during the preceding years 
between Great Britain and Germany for colo- 
nial possessions. Those who had confidence in 



THE GROWTH OF CANADA 293 

the future expansion of American commerce 
were much irritated at the thoroughness with 
which the most promising scenes of coming 
trade and naval stations for its protection were 
appropriated by the European rival powers. 
Samoa at least was insured to the commerce of 
the United States, and in that fact was a source 
of small but sufficient comfort for those to whom 
the future of the Philippines was darkness. 

Additional stimulus to American sensibilities 
was given by the movement for imperial fed- 
eration that took shape and became prominent 
throughout the British Empire during the 
eighties. The chief impulse to this movement 
came obviously enough from the expanding 
activities of Russia in Asia and Germany in 
Africa. British prestige and commercial in- 
terests were felt to be imperilled. The Indian 
Empire might readily yield to the insidious 
sapping of the Russians; the self-governing 
colonies in Australasia and Africa might be 
lured to seek through nominal independence a 
real connection with Britain's latest commer- 
cial rival. In Australia notoriously, and in 
other of the colonies with no less certainty, an 
active fraction of public opinion favored sev- 
erance, sooner or later, of the British tie. In 



294 THE GROWTH OF CANADA 

England itself, as we have seen, such severance 
had long been regarded in high political circles 
as inevitable and not wholly undesirable. Now, 
however, that the time seemed to be approach- 
ing for the realization of this predestined break- 
up, opposition became vigorously vocal in both 
colonies and mother-land. The Imperial Feder- 
ation League, unofficially, and a succession of 
conferences under the auspices of the imperial 
and colonial governments, officially, instituted 
earnest discussion of the ways and means of 
maintaining the unity of the empire. 

While the origin of this agitation was in con- 
ditions remote from America, the future of 
Canada and its relations with the United States 
became at once, when the problem was fairly 
posed, the central question of the debate. The 
immediate practical end that engaged the 
attention of the federationists was military and 
naval defence of the widely scattered members 
of the empire. Tariff arrangements that should 
promote a unifying tendency were also sug- 
gested. So soon as discussion of these ends 
touched Canada, her great neighbor to the 
southward became the subject of disquieting 
consideration. Defensive arrangements for New 
South Wales might suggest malevolent inten- 



THE GROWTH OF CANADA 295 

tions on the part of Germany or France or 
Japan; the tariff of the Cape Colony might be 
directed against the intrusive competition of 
these or half a dozen other enterprising nations: 
but in connection with the Dominion of Canada 
mihtary and commercial protection could refer 
primarily to no power save the United States. 
Hence it was that the animated discussion of 
imperial federation acted as a challenge to the 
militant national spirit in the republic. Inci- 
dents of normal national development in which 
the Canadians took justifiable pride — the sup- 
pression of the Riel uprising of 1885 by Domin- 
ion forces, the completion of the railway line 
from ocean to ocean in the same year, the great 
improvements in the canals, and the develop- 
ment of manufactures — were jealously regard- 
ed by sensitive Americans as so many steps 
toward the perfection of an imperial policy of 
hostility toward the United States. 

The internal party politics of the Dominion 
presented certain incidents that served to con- 
firm the unfriendly trend in American opinion. 
In the later eighties systematic agitation was 
begun by a small group of able men for a policy 
of commercial union, even if it should lead 
eventually to political union, between Canada 



296 THE GROWTH OF CANADA 

and the United States. The basis of the move- 
ment was the despair of ever securing other- 
wise such trade relations with the powerful 
neighbor as would bring real prosperity to the 
people of the Dominion. The rejection of 
reciprocity of the old sort in 1888 and the 
triumph of the protectionists in the presiden- 
tial elections of that year were held to have 
ended all hope of escaping the ruthless extinc- 
tion of Canada's industrial independence. With- 
out ill feeling toward the mother-land and with- 
out desire to sever the political ties uniting the 
colony to her, the advocates of commercial 
union frankly declared that to Canadians, as 
conditions had developed, the economic bur- 
den of the British connection had become too 
great to be borne. Goldwin Smith, the lit- 
erary high priest of this creed, sustained it with 
all the frigid doctrinaire logic of Manchesterism 
in its best estate, contending that geography 
made physically inevitable, and political econ- 
omy made morally necessary, the annexation of 
Canada to the United States. Federation with 
the far-flung fragments of English-speaking 
humanity was to him a ridiculous dream. The 
Liberal Party in the Dominion, with its tradi- 
tion of free trade, showed some tenderness for 



THE GROWTH OF CANADA 297 

the commercial-unionists, while Sir John Mac- 
donald, leading the Conservatives, in his last 
campaign, gladly seized the opportunity to 
appeal once more to the sentiment of loyalty 
to Great Britain. The elections of 1891 gave 
him a final victory, and showed with quite 
adequate clearness that the Canadian people 
preferred to follow their feelings in the British 
Empire rather than their interests in the Amer- 
ican Republic. 

No great access of hostile feeling in the United 
States toward the Canadians was manifest as 
a result of this preference. It was regarded by 
many Americans as a natural and properly 
spirited response to the McKinley tariff of the 
preceding year. This law administered almost 
fatal blows to certain important Canadian indus- 
tries, and it was accompanied by the rejection, 
so peremptory as to be almost insulting, of 
overtures from Canada looking to the renewal 
of reciprocity as in 1854. The McKinley Act 
in fact proclaimed a tariff war a outrance be- 
tween the two neighbors, and the Canadian 
election of 1891 signified a readiness for the 
struggle. In the United States, however, there 
was halting and indecision. The elections of 
1892 brought the Democrats again into power, 



298 THE GROWTH OF CANADA 

and the result was a renunciation of the Mc- 
Kinley programme, with the modified tariff of 
1894. This in turn was repudiated by the 
voters, and in 1897 the Dingley Act brought the 
definitive adoption of protection in its most 
thoroughgoing form. 

The shifting phases of the prolonged and 
complex struggle in the United States produced 
the results that are inevitable when the con- 
flicts over trade and markets that used to con- 
vulse the politics of monarchies are reproduced 
in democratic states. Among the masses there 
was but a dim perception of the real financial 
and industrial interests that were at stake in 
the discussions over the tariff rates. What 
appeared clear to all, however, was that for- 
eigners, especially the British, were in some way 
seeking to get advantages over American com- 
petitors. The merits of the case not being 
intelligible, the average citizen could be moved 
in his judgments only by the sense of an insid- 
ious and pernicious activity by foreigners di- 
rected against his countrymen. 

Such was the contribution made by the 
tariff controversies to the latent feeling of hos- 
tility in the United States toward all things 
British as it existed in the later eighties and 



THE GROWTH OF CANADA 299 

early nineties. The unfavorable decision in 
the fur-seal arbitration had a certain influence 
of the same nature. Whatever the merits of 
the case on the technical claims of the lawyers, 
it was a game played in which the British won 
and the Americans lost. To show too much 
chagrin over the defeat must be avoided; but 
to nourish a dislike of the victor and be vigilant 
for a chance to get satisfaction was within the 
reach of all. 

It was a synthesis of the various elements of 
popular feeling just noticed, supplemented by 
the influence of conspicuous political personali- 
ties, that produced the astounding explosion of 
1S95 in relation to Venezuela. 



CHAPTER VII 
VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

In June, 1895, after a Liberal interlude of 
nearly three years under Mr. Gladstone and 
Lord Rosebery, the British Government came 
once more into the hands of the Marquis of 
Salisbury, leading the coalition of Conserva- 
tives and Liberal-Unionists. It was destined to 
be ten years before another change of party con- 
trol should take place, so thoroughly were the 
Liberals demoralized by the fall of Parnell and 
the retirement of Gladstone. 

Lord Salisbury entered upon his administra- 
tion with complete consciousness that the rela- 
tions of Great Britain with the other powers 
of Europe would require the most absorbing 
attention. The harrying of the Armenians by 
the Turks was in full progress, disturbing the 
delicate adjustment made by the Conference of 
Berlin in 1878; in the Far East, Japan, fresh 
from her triumph over China, was confronting 
Russia in such a way as to raise pressing ques- 
tions about British interests in that region; 

300 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 301 

Africa, from the Cape to Cairo, teemed with 
disquieting problems — with Kitchener just start- 
ing to redeem the Soudan, Italy on the verge 
of disastrous war with Menelik of Abyssinia, 
France and Germany, in the central and south- 
ern regions of the continent, watching the 
promise of trouble between the British and their 
Dutch and native neighbors. Intent on the 
possibilities in all these directions, his Lordship 
was probably much shocked to be confronted, 
only a few weeks after taking office, with a 
diplomatic communication that peremptorily 
diverted his attention to affairs in America. 
On August 7 Mr. Bayard, ambassador of the 
United States, presented to Lord Salisbury the 
celebrated note of Secretary of State Olney on 
the matter of the Venezuelan boundary. 

The line separating British Guiana from 
Venezuela had never been determined. Nego- 
tiations touching the subject had been carried 
on by the Venezuelan and British Governments 
at intervals since early in the nineteenth cen- 
tury, but for various reasons without conclusive 
result. Beginning in the late seventies, Vene- 
zuela had pressed insistently for a submission 
of the question to arbitration. At the same 
time she had kept the Government of the 



302 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

United States informed as to the situation, and 
had urged upon that government the duty of 
sustaining the demand for arbitration. The 
Venezuelan contention was that Great Brit- 
ain, under cover of the uncertainty as to the 
boundary, was continually extending her settle- 
ments and her jurisdiction into the disputed 
territory, and was thus contravening the Mon- 
roe Doctrine. In the documents submitted to 
the United States by the Venezuelan author- 
ities there was some evidence to support this 
view, and to sustain the charge that the British 
refusal to go to arbitration was animated by 
the purpose to delay a settlement until still 
larger areas of rich mineral land should be oc- 
cupied by British subjects. 

Successive administrations at Washington lis- 
tened with friendly interest to the Venezuelan 
representations, but refrained from taking up 
the matter with the British Government, partly 
because it was the wish of the Venezuelans that 
the United States should be the umpire in case 
of an arbitration, and this would be rendered 
impracticable if the United States should com- 
mit herself in any degree to the Venezuelan 
interest at the outset. During the first term 
of President Cleveland, however, when the ten- 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 303 

sion on the subject had become so acute as to 
result soon in the rupture of diplomatic rela- 
tions between Venezuela and Great Britain, 
Secretary Bayard made a formal tender of good 
offices to the British Government, alluding in 
his despatch to the Monroe Doctrine. The 
tender was declined, with no overwhelming 
manifestation of gratitude on the part of Lord 
Salisbury, and with only the most vague and 
general indication of the British position. A 
year later, in 1888, upon a report that British 
mining operators were beginning work in parts 
of the disputed territory hitherto untouched, 
Secretary Bayard made another offer of media- 
tion, but with no more success. Somewhat 
later, with the active interest of the American 
Government negotiations between Venezuela 
and Great Britain were resumed, but in 1893 
they came to a full stop again on account of the 
old obstacle. Venezuela demanded arbitration 
on the full claims of both parties; Great Britain 
refused absolutely, as she had done since the 
middle of the century, to submit to an arbiter 
her title to certain regions that had long been 
occupied by British settlements. These regions 
were held to be sufficiently well determined by 
a line run by a surveyor named Schomburgk, 



304 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

and the territory within this Schomburgk Une 
was declared to be the irreducible minimum of 
the British possessions. Only what lay beyond 
it could be made the subject of arbitration. 
Against this attitude of the British Government 
the Venezuelan Government entered solemn 
protests, and made passionate appeals for inter- 
vention to the United States. 

Mr. Cleveland was at this time President, 
and Mr. Bayard was ambassador of the United 
States at London. All the influences expressive 
of the national self-consciousness, as noticed 
in the last chapter, were obtrusively active in 
the American Republic. At the very beginning 
of his term the President had antagonized the 
whole chauvinistic spirit by a summary reversal 
of his predecessor's policy looking to the annex- 
ation of the Hawaiian Islands, and by a disas- 
trous attempt to restore the native monarchy 
which the American population of the islands 
had recently overthrown. To the enemies of 
the administration this somewhat humiliating 
episode gave the cue for incessant iteration of 
the charge that the President lacked the virile 
spirit that would give the nation its proper 
place among the powers. Various unimpor- 
tant incidents, which might have been magnified 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 305 

into demonstrations of aggressiveness in foreign 
policy, were adjusted without excitement or 
display; and this again was used to strengthen 
the idea that nothing worthy of a great nation 
was to be expected of Cleveland. Reference 
to the Venezuelan dispute with Great Britain 
was made in the President's annual message 
to Congress in December, 1894, ^^^ Congress 
later responded by a resolution urging that the 
question be settled by arbitration; but the 
general feeling in America was that, however 
desirable such procedure was, no action by the 
administration was to be expected. 

Mr. Cleveland, meanwhile, reached the con- 
clusion that peril to peace would result if the 
boundary dispute remained longer unsettled. 
Venezuelan complaints continued frequent and 
shrill; reports of further encroachments by 
the British in the gold-mining regions were 
diligently circulated; and ominous indications 
appeared in the American press of nervousness 
lest the Monroe Doctrine were threatened with 
infringement. It was resolved to bring the 
affair to a head at once, and Secretary Olney's 
despatch above referred to was the means 
adopted. That the despatch was well calcu- 
lated to effect the immediate end in view, could 



3o6 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

hardly be questioned. It reviewed the course 
of the boundary dispute, in the sense, for the 
most part, of the Venezuelan representations; 
it asserted the interest of the United States in 
the controversy on the ground, first, of the 
general principles of international law, and 
second, of the long-established and often-pro- 
claimed policy known as the Monroe Doctrine; 
it maintained that the British refusal to submit 
the question to arbitration might cover a process 
of aggression upon Venezuela that the United 
States could not tolerate; and it concluded 
with a demand for a definite decision as to 
whether the British Government would or 
would not submit the boundar}^ question in its 
entirety to impartial arbitration. 

The tone and temper of this communication 
were unusual and should have warned Lord 
Salisbury of an impending crisis. In connec- 
tion with the Monroe Doctrine, in particular. 
Secretary Olney's pronouncements were start- 
ling. Among its implications were: that there 
must be no intrusion by any European power 
in the politics of any state of either North or 
South America; that any permanent political 
union between an American and a European 
state is unnatural and inexpedient; that the 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 307 

United States is practically sovereign on the 
American continent, **and its fiat is law upon 
the subjects to which it confines its interposi- 
tion." The challenge of such audacious and 
arrogant dogmas it was naturally difficult to 
resist, and Lord Salisbury was not of the tem- 
perament to ignore it. His response to Olney's 
despatch took the form of two notes of the same 
date, November 26, 1895. One was devoted to 
a demonstration that the Monroe Doctrine had 
no standing in international law; that Mr. 
Olney's version of its content and implications 
had never before been heard or dreamed of; 
that neither in the Monroe Doctrine nor else- 
where could the United States find warrant for 
the assertion of an interest in every boundary 
dispute between an American state and a 
European power; and that Great Britain would 
repel with emphasis and something of indigna- 
tion Secretary Olney's sweeping assumption 
that her connection with her American colonies 
was unnatural, inexpedient, and destined to 
cease. In his second note Lord Salisbury re- 
viewed the course of the controversy with 
Venezuela, presenting facts and considerations 
that for the first time gave to the British case 
a reasonable, if not wholly convincing, founda- 



3o8 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

tion. The conclusion of the note, however, 
embodied a reiteration of the old decision, not 
to submit to arbitration the claims to regions 
within the Schomburgk line. 

If in substance and spirit Olney's note was 
startlingly new, the response of Salisbury- was 
discouragingly old. If the changed position 
and aspirations ot the United States were by 
the one put in so high relief as to be somewhat 
coarse and repulsive, they were by the other 
left wholly out of the modelling. If Olney 
brusquely voiced the feeling of the youth who 
had reached his majority and claimed a grown 
man's estate, Salisbury' sounded the old Tor}' 
note of querulous impatience with the restless 
and innovating spirit of the immature. Xo 
doubt was left by the correspondence that the 
two great English-speaking peoples were diplo- 
matically at the point of most serious tension. 

President Cleveland's demand having been 
refused by the British Government, he referred 
the whole matter to Congress, laying before that 
body, on December 17, 1S95, the despatches 
above referred to, with a message announcing 
his views as to the existing situation and as to 
the course that should be pursued by the United 
States. With regret that the British Govern- 



VENEZUEL.\— AND AFTER 309 

ment had declined to agree to the most satis- 
factory mode o^ ending the controversy with 
Vcnezueki, he declared that the right, the duty, 
and the interest of the United States required 
that it ascertain in some way what the true 
boundary was. Only thus could there be cer- 
tainty that a strong European power was not 
encroaching upon and oppressing a weak Amer- 
ican republic, and thus violating the ]\Ionroe 
Doctrine, He asked Congress, therefore, to 
provide for a commission to investigate the 
histor}' and facts of the matter, and report what 
the true divisional line was between Venezuela 
and British Guiana. The line thus determined 
it would be the duty of the United States to 
maintain as the lawful boundary. Any appro- 
priation of lands or exercise of jurisdiction by 
Great Britain in places thus decided to belong 
to Venezuela would be, Mr. Cleveland affirmed, 
a wilful aggression upon the rights and interests 
of the United States, to be resisted by every 
means in its power. And this belligerent atti- 
tude he confirmed beyond all misapprehension 
by the ominous words: *'In making these 
recommendations I am fully alive to the respon- 
sibility incurred, and keenly realize all the 
consequences that may follow." Yet, he con- 



3IO VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

eluded, "there is no calamity which a great 
nation can invite which equals that which fol- 
lows a supine submission to wrong and injustice 
and the consequent loss of national self-respect 
and honor beneath which are shielded and 
defended a people's safety and greatness." 

The shock that was propagated through the 
English-speaking world, and far be3-ond its 
bounds, by this message of President Cleveland 
had no parallel since the seizure of Slidell and 
Mason a generation in the past. Two facts 
contributed much to the intensity of the dis- 
turbance. The existence of anything like a 
serious difference between the British and the 
American Government was absolutely unsus- 
pected outside of a very small circle of public 
men; and the President was believed by both 
his friends and his foes to be so resolutely pacific 
in his attitude that only the most imperious 
exigency could change it. The message re- 
vealed a disagreement so grave as to have moved 
even Mr. Cleveland to thought and speech of 
war. Nor was anything reassuring to be found 
in the action of Congress; for both houses, 
without opposition, adopted the measure that 
the President recommended, and with the new 
year a commission of distinguished Americans 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 311 

appointed by the President began its laborious 
task of determining the true divisional line be- 
tween Venezuela and British Guiana. 

It is agreed by persons experienced in earth- 
quakes that this species of phenomenon includes 
distinct varieties, clearly marked off from one 
another by physical and psychological effects. 
The most destructive materially and most dis- 
turbing mentally is that known in unscientific 
parlance as the '* twister." President Cleve- 
land's message had all the effects of the twister. 
Materially there was a huge displacement of 
credits and securities in the financial markets. 
Psychologically there was manifest on both sides 
of the Atlantic great bewilderment and obfusca- 
tion, with strange distortions and incoherencies 
in the reasoning processes. American public 
opinion sustained with extraordinary emphasis 
and unanimity the President's assertion of the 
Monroe Doctrine and his belligerent attitude 
toward the violation of it by Great Britain. 
Every latent current of hostility to the British 
and all the springs of aggressive national con- 
sciousness united in an impressive flood of popu- 
lar feeling. If the administration had had no 
other purpose than to evoke for the information 
of the world the visible spirit of the American 



312 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

democracy, that purpose was fully achieved in 
the first week succeeding the Venezuelan mes- 
sage. Then came the distortions and confusion 
of the twister. It began to appear on calm re- 
flection that, despite the stirring words at the 
end of Cleveland's message, war with Great 
Britain was neither declared nor imminent. 
Whether or not the Monroe Doctrine applied to 
the boundar}' dispute, no allegation was made 
that the treasured doctrine had in fact been 
violated. Peril to the honor and interests of 
the United States was hypothetical, not actual; 
and the warning of dire results to follow a cer- 
tain contingency was to be effective only after 
a body of historians and jurists should have 
discovered a boundan,* line which in all proba- 
bility was humanly undiscoverable. With the 
due realization of these conditions the spirit of 
militant Americanism receded into the depths 
and, stronger and more self-confident for hav- 
ing been revealed in its full proportions, awaited 
a more propitious season for asserting itself. 

x\mong the English people, meanwhile, Cleve- 
land's message and the manifestations of Ameri- 
can feeling that followed it were received chiefly 
with bewilderment and incredulity. That the 
two governments should have reached in utter 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 313 

secrecy the verge of war, was incomprehensi- 
ble; that so grave a situation should be due 
to an obscure boundary dispute in one of the 
least important fragments of the empire, seemed 
grotesquely beyond the limits of belief. Some 
voices from the lurking-places of ancient Tory- 
ism were shrill with resentment and defiance 
toward the new display of Yankee insolence; 
but the great volume of opinion sounded the 
note of amazed regret that tension had arisen, 
and of eager confidence that its causes could be 
removed. While responsible politicians were 
appropriately reticent, men of light and leading 
in other fields pronounced with emphasis and 
iteration that war between the two great Eng- 
lish-speaking nations was unthinkable. Au- 
thors, journalists, ministers of the Gospel, and 
business men demanded that a peaceful way 
out of the threatening difficulty should be 
promptly found. The enormous development 
in means of communication and thence in per- 
sonal relationships between the two peoples 
made powerfully for amity. Where in the days 
of the Trent afl:'air intimacies between English- 
men and Americans were numbered by dozens, 
thousands and myriads existed in 1896. Across 
the dividing Atlantic, therefore, sped by mail 



314 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

and by cable great streams of protest against 
rupture in fact or in feeling. Friendly re- 
sponses from America came promptly in reas- 
suring volume. Influential groups on both sides 
of the ocean demanded that, no matter how 
tight and tangled the knot made by diplomacy, 
it be opened by the methods of peace, not of 
war. Arbitration for the settlement of disputes 
between the kindred peoples became within a 
few weeks the theme of an extremely energetic 
and wide-spread agitation, guided by co-operat- 
ing leaders of the intellectual classes of both 
nations. 

While this unofficial sentiment was taking 
active shape, there was much uneasiness lest the 
diplomatists should not see their way, after so 
peremptory a disagreement, to a dignified re- 
sumption of intercourse about the Venezuelan 
question. A counter-irritant to oversensitive- 
ness on this ground in the British Foreign Office 
was found in the acute conditions that arose in 
a far distant part of the empire less than a fort- 
night after Cleveland's disturbing message was 
published. Jameson's ill-starred raid into the 
Transvaal met its humiliating end on January 
2, 1896, and on the following day the German 
Emperor's congratulatory despatch to the Boer 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 315 

President was made known. The explosion of 
British wrath over this incident drove Venezuela 
and its boundary quite out of the range of pop- 
ular interest. Yankee interference in South 
America excited mild regret; German inter- 
ference in South Africa roused the fiercest fight- 
ing passion. Yet the attitude of the United 
States, however unimportant relatively, could 
not be ignored by a prudent foreign minister 
in the presence of threatening conditions nearer 
home. For this reason, perhaps, among others. 
Lord Salisbury met more than half-way the ad- 
vances of the Cleveland administration toward 
further negotiation. 

In the middle of January the American com- 
mission applied through Secretary Olney for 
documentary and other information on which 
Great Britain based its views as to the true 
divisional line between Guiana and Venezuela. 
Lord Salisbury furnished with enthusiasm all 
that his office possessed. At the opening of 
Parliament in February both he and Mr. Bal- 
four, leader of the Commons, admitted the 
interest of the United States in the boundary 
question, and intimated the hope that diplomacy 
would achieve a settlement of the difficulty. 
At the same time his Lordship indicated a much 



3i6 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

less Intolerant attitude than before as to the 
efficacy of arbitration in international differ- 
ences. In accordance with the disposition thus 
manifested, a suggestion from Mr. Olney that 
negotiations be undertaken at Washington for 
the settlement of the difficulty with Venezuela 
was agreed to by the British Government, with 
a voluntary expression of willingness to take up 
the matter either with Venezuela or with the 
United States acting as her friend. So full a 
concession to the American view could not fail 
to insure a pacific agreement. The negotia- 
tions were begun forthwith between Great Brit- 
ain and America. The British abandoned their 
insistence on a fixed line as the irreducible min- 
imum of their territory, and accepted the sub- 
mission of the whole claim of each power to 
arbitration, with the proviso that actual occu- 
pation or control of any region for fifty years 
should give title to either party. On this basis 
a treaty of arbitration between Great Britain 
and Venezuela was readily agreed to and duly 
carried out. With this the matter of the 
boundary passed out of concern in the rela- 
tions of the English-speaking peoples. 

In its broad character as a diplomatic episode 
this whole affair stands as an assertion by the 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 317 

United States and a recognition by Great Brit- 
ain of a far wider interest and authority be- 
yond her borders than was ever before definitely 
maintained by the American Republic, whether 
as Monroe Doctrine or otherwise. The giant 
democracy took her place among the great 
powers of the earth, whether for weal or for 
woe, and the British motherland was the first 
to accord recognition to the new position. 

More than this, however, gives importance 
to the Venezuelan boundary controversy in 
the history of the relations of English-speak- 
ing peoples. Here began a systematic and 
comprehensive agitation for the definitive sup- 
planting of war by arbitration as the last resort 
in the disputes among nations. The negotia- 
tion of the treaty by which the Venezuelan 
boundary was settled was accompanied by the 
framing of a general treaty of arbitration appli- 
cable for the future to controversies between 
Great Britain and the United States. The 
diplomats who in November and December of 
1895 sent thrills of warlike feeling through a 
hundred million English-speaking people, in 
the spring of 1896 were meticulously intent 
on devising the formulas that should render 
war impossible. So far as this situation was a 



3i8 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

result of the disturbance caused by the presi- 
dential message of December 17, it impressively 
confirmed and justified the unwavering conten- 
tion of Mr. Cleveland that that document was 
in purpose and effect a powerful factor in the 
maintenance of peace. 

On January 11, 1897, three weeks before the 
conclusion of the treaty that sent the Venezue- 
lan boundary to arbitration, Secretary Olney 
and Sir Julian Pauncefote signed at Washing- 
ton a general treaty of arbitration. It embodied 
the closely reasoned conclusions of strong and 
sincere minds as to the best practical methods 
of solving the intricate problems presented by 
the end in view. All differences between the 
two governments that diplomacy should prove 
unable to adjust were to be sent to arbiters. 
Three kinds of tribunals were provided, among 
which the jurisdiction over the various classes 
of controversies was distributed, with provi- 
sions for appellate and revisory procedure. The 
tribunal whose function it was to deal with the 
delicate questions of territorial claims and of 
principles affecting "national rights" was to 
consist of three judges from the higher courts 
of each government, with no umpire, decisions 
to be valid only by a vote of at least five to one. 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 319 

The provisions of this treaty proved to be 
in advance of effective pubHc opinion in the 
United States. Distrust of Great Britain could 
not be eliminated so expeditiously from the 
popular as from the diplomatic mind. The fly 
in the ointment of Mr. Cleveland's pacifist 
method became now unpleasantly conspicuous; 
for his suggestion that British policy in South 
America might involve sinister designs on the 
Monroe Doctrine became a fixed idea with 
many sincere patriots. A treaty of general 
arbitration might, they claimed, bring sooner 
or later the obligation to submit the validity of 
this doctrine to an arbitral tribunal — a possi- 
bility that could not be contemplated save with 
repulsion. An additional element, moreover, 
in the popular prejudice against Great Britain 
had received much development in the revolu- 
tionary electoral campaign of 1896 in the United 
States. This was the year in which the move- 
ment for the free coinage of silver reached its 
climax and obtained the support of the Demo- 
cratic Party. To the passionate propagandists 
of the free-silver dogma the immovable attach- 
ment of Great Britain to gold monometallism was 
an evidence of political depravity and reinforced 
the suspicion of inveterate hostility to America. 



320 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

Under the influence of these and other Hke 
feelings the opposition to the arbitration treaty 
was strong enough, first to effect the amend- 
ment of the draft in its most essential features, 
and finally to deny it the approval of the 
American Senate. The decisive vote, on May 
5, 1897, stood 43 to 26, less than two-thirds in 
the affirmative. Before this vote was reached 
the safety of the Monroe Doctrine had been 
insured by an amendment requiring a special 
agreement for the submission of any difference 
"which in the judgment of either power ma- 
terially affects its honor or its domestic or 
foreign policy.'' 

The failure of this treaty was the source of 
bitter disappointment to the friends of peace, 
official and unoflficial, on both sides of the ocean. 
Hope had run high that the English-speaking 
peoples were about to pronounce decisively in 
favor of the principle of unrestricted arbitra- 
tion and to give to this very advanced ideal the 
test of practical application. Even after the 
Senate, by amending the draft, had demolished 
this hope, the confidence still remained that the 
influence of these two powerful nations would 
be exerted for peace through the adoption of 
arbitration in some form. Failure in this also. 



i 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 321 

and by a margin so narrow that a change of 
three votes would have made the result different, 
was depressing, if not wholly discouraging. It 
was on the scroll of fate, however, that the 
decisive advance toward international harmony 
was to come in the wake of wide-spread war. 
An actual agreement on arbitration followed 
hostilities in Cuba, in South Africa, and in the 
Far East. 

Whether the declaration of war on Spain by 
the United States in the spring of 1898 was 
justifiable and unavoidable, will be a useful 
topic of debate by generations of schoolboys. 
There can be no room for debate, however, as 
to whether the war was popular in the United 
States. Every nerve of the nation tingled with 
joy that the great American democracy had at 
last a chance to show the spirit and power that 
were in it. Serious and thoughtful classes as- 
sumed with due sense of responsibility the task 
that had become the nation's duty. The belli- 
cose and reckless classes greeted with ardor 
the opportunity for adventure and excitement. 
To every class, intent on the particular aspect 
of the situation that especially concerned it, 
came with thrilling satisfaction the evidence 
that the other English-speaking peoples were 



322 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

giving their sympathy and moral support to 
the Americans. The evidence was not always 
of so clear and precise a character as to pass 
in a court of law. Rumor and gossip and cal- 
culated lying played the part that Is usual in 
times of stress and excitement. There was no 
room for serious doubt, however, that British 
opinion was running strongly with the United 
States — that an aggressive war for the acquisi- 
tion of Cuba and other desirable West Indian 
islands that Great Britain had always been 
supposed to covet, was actually applauded by 
all the leading elements of English sentiment. 
Before the war was ended, numerous and highly 
significant incidents confirmed the trend of 
British feeling. Members of the cabinet, in- 
cluding even Lord Salisbury himself, publicly 
praised the Americans and their mission in the 
war. The leaders of the press, with a few 
permanent exceptions of the ancient Tory type, 
valiantly sustained the cause of the United 
States against the generally violent assaults 
of the Continental editors. At Manila, after 
Dewey's victory suddenly raised far-reaching 
problems as to the future of the Philippines, the 
harassed American commander received demon- 
strative moral support from the British naval 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 323 

force in the harbor. And when, finally, in the 
treaty of peace the United States, with misgiv- 
ings and reluctance, took over from Spain her 
Far Eastern dominions, a cordial chorus of 
British approval greeted the assumption by the 
great English-speaking democracy of so consid- 
erable a share in the white man's imperialistic 
burden. 

The effect on American opinion of these gen- 
eral and emphatic manifestations of sympathy 
and support was revolutionary. The springs 
of hostility to Britain that had been running full 
volume for a decade dried up to futile and un- 
noted tricklings. Mere exuberance of strength 
and spirit had accounted for much of this hostil- 
ity, and the fighting with Spain had diverted this 
particular current. An uneasy sense of slighted 
vanity — of inadequate recognition of America's 
physical and moral greatness — was soothed to 
rest by the generous British approval of the 
correctness of American motives in declaring 
war on Spain, and by the warm welcome to the 
republic at its entry into the larger world-pol- 
itics. If British cordiality in 1898 had been 
based exclusively on shrewd calculation of self- 
interest, it could not have been more precisely 
opportune. In the following year the South 



324 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

African situation shaped itself into the war with 
the Boers. It is not hard to imagine what would 
have been the course of American feeling if this 
episode had developed three years earlier. As 
it was, however, reciprocity in sympathy and 
moral support was imperative. Those who 
were absorbed in the pursuit of Aguinaldo found 
little opportunity to carp at the harrying of 
Kruger. Transatlantic strictures therefore were 
but feeble as the two great English-speaking 
peoples, in Africa and the Philippines respect- 
ively, ruthlessly imposed upon backward na- 
tions the conditions of civilization and progress. 
The unprecedentedly cordial relations pro- 
duced by the conditions in 1898 were promptly 
made use of by the foreign offices in an effort to 
reduce the rather extensive list of unsettled 
differences outstanding between the two govern- 
ments. Most of these involved Canada, and 
internal politics on both sides of the frontier 
happened to be just at this time propitious for 
adjustment. The Liberal Party won control 
of the Dominion government in 1896, and Sir 
Wilfrid Laurier, the prime minister, was anx- 
ious to try again for a system of reciprocity with 
the United States. At the same time President 
McKinley, approving though he did the excess- 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 325 

ively protectionist tariff of 1897, was definitely 
committed to the scheme of reciprocal arrange- 
ments for which that tariff act provided. The 
possibility of some agreement on this difficult 
but familiar subject led to the discussion of 
other matters, some equally familiar, others less 
familiar but distinctly more pressing. Among 
the old and well-known items were the seal 
fisheries of Behring Sea, the coast fisheries of 
the North Atlantic, and, after long quiescence, 
the Rush-Bagot arrangement concerning ships- 
of-war on the Great Lakes. Of the novel items 
by far the most important was the Alaskan 
boundary; for the discovery of gold on the 
Klondike River in 1896 brought a large popula- 
tion at once to that remote region and raised 
grave questions of jurisdiction where the bound- 
ary line had never been run. 

For the settlement of all these and other mat- 
ters a joint commission was constituted, which 
met at Quebec and also at Washington from 
August, 1898, to February, 1899. In the mem- 
bership of the commission the now established 
policy of leaving Canadian foreign affairs 
chiefly to Canadians was again conspicuously 
illustrated; for the British representatives in- 
cluded five British-Americans and but one 



326 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

member. Lord Herschell, from across the At- 
lantic. The five consisted of the premiers of 
Canada and Newfoundland, with two other 
members of the Canadian cabinet, and a mem- 
ber of the Canadian House of Commons. The 
United States was represented by no less dis- 
tinguished and highly qualified persons — Sen- 
ators Fairbanks and Gray, Mr. Dingley, ma- 
jority leader in the House of Representatives, 
and three experienced diplomats. All the prep- 
arations promised well for a comprehensive 
adjustment, and roseate reports of progress 
attended the work of the commission. On 
February 20, however, a recess was taken, which 
gradually became recognized as permanent. 
The sessions were never resumed, and the chief 
cause of this unfortunate outcome was the 
inability of the two governments to agree about 
the Alaskan boundary. 

This last of the boundary disputes that filled 
the hundred years of peace with contention had 
all the familiar characteristics of its predeces- 
sors. The line dividing Russian from British 
America was described in the treaties that fixed 
it as following the summit of the mountains 
situated parallel to the coast between two 
designated points of latitude and longitude; 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 327 

where the mountains should prove to be more 
than ten leagues from the ocean, the Hne should 
run parallel to the coast at a distance of ten 
leagues from it. Mountains such as the treaties 
called for, the Americans could not find; Cana- 
dian geographers found them in adequate abun- 
dance and very near to the ocean. As to the 
"coast" from which the ten leagues were to 
be measured, the difference of opinion was no 
less marked. To the Americans the term 
meant continental land, with all the sinuosi- 
ties and indentations with which the region 
abounded, so that the boundary should never 
come within thirty miles of tide-water; to the 
Canadians the coast-line was a wholly different 
thing, to be run by the general trend of the 
land, and to be determined on occasion by the 
headlands of inlets, or by offshore islands, so 
that the boundary would often cross consid- 
erable stretches of tide-water. 

There was no concealment of the practical 
issue that lay behind the technical contentions 
of the two parties. The American position 
excluded Canada absolutely from contact with 
the ocean anywhere on the Pacific coast north 
of the southernmost point of Alaska; the 
Canadian claim insured to Canada a seaport on 



328 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

the arm of the ocean that afforded the most 
practicable access to the Klondike gold-fields, 
which were mostly on Canadian soil. The 
interests at stake were very great and the 
conflict was correspondingly stubborn. When 
agreement became impossible in the confer- 
ences of the commission, the British representa- 
tives offered arbitration, but the Americans 
refused consent to any form of tribunal that 
left the decision to an umpire, and the British 
rejected as futile any tribunal that might be 
deadlocked. In such an impasse there was no 
recourse but to give up the matter, since the 
Canadians had consented to the commission 
largely in the expectation of a favorable out- 
come on this point, and had been ready to make 
substantial concessions in other directions in 
order to attain their purpose here. 

The inauspicious result of this first attempt 
to reap a crop of adjustments from the inter- 
national cordiality produced by the Spanish 
War did not prevent a further cultivation of 
the field. Apparently the first attempt had 
been too ambitious — had sought returns of too 
diverse a character. Taken one at a time in- 
stead of collectively, the problems calling for 
solution might be more successfully handled. 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 329 

Such seems to have been the conclusion reached 
by the British and American Governments, and 
the procedure in accordance with which it was 
put in practice effected smoothly and harmoni- 
ously the remarkable series of agreements that 
brought the century of peace to a close in un- 
precedented good feeling. The era had come 
of a singularly sane and gifted series of per- 
sonalities in control of American foreign affairs. 
John Hay, after distinguished success at the 
court of Saint James's, became in 1899 head of 
the Department of State at Washington. Jo- 
seph H. Choate succeeded Hay as ambassador 
at London. Elihu Root, after indispensable 
service in other positions, took over the Depart- 
ment of State at the death of Hay in 1905. 
To these men on the American side, with 
Salisbury, Lansdowne, and Grey at the British 
Foreign Office, and Pauncefote and James 
Bryce in the British embassy at Washington, 
is to be ascribed in a particular degree, though 
without disparagement of others, the con- 
firmation of that deep amity with which the 
century of peace came to a close. 

The decade following 1898 shows a far larger 
total of diplomatic agreements between Great 
Britain and the United States than any other 



330 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

decade in history. First, the disturbing bound- 
ary of Alaska was removed from the fore- 
ground till the disagreeable feelings aroused by 
it should have time to subside. A modus 
Vivendi was put into effect in October, 1899, 
fixing a provisional line at the points where 
friction was most imminent and protecting all 
rights and claims of both parties pending the 
definitive settlement. 

Soon followed the announcement of negotia- 
tions peculiarly calculated to give satisfaction 
to the Americans. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty 
of 1850, hailed as a momentous triumph of 
American diplomacy when it was concluded, had 
become later offensive to the national pride. 
It obligated the United States to refrain from 
exclusive control of the proposed Nicaragua 
Canal, and to insure the safety and neutrality 
of that or any other transisthmian communica- 
tion only in association with Great Britain. 
During the half-century that had elapsed since 
the conclusion of this treaty, the interests and 
the power of the United States had taken such 
form that no canal was likely to be actually 
constructed except in accordance with her will. 
The restrictions on this will embodied in the 
Clayton-Bulwer agreement were not only a 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 331 

source of exasperation to American feelings, 
but were also a grave obstacle to the construc- 
tion of a canal. A strong sentiment prevailed 
that no canal at all was preferable to one over 
which Great Britain should have joint control. 
Especially in view of the recent extension given 
to the Monroe Doctrine, the intrusion of a 
European power in the affairs of the isthmus 
was resented as intolerable. 

Under the circumstances, the willingness of 
Great Britain to abandon her rights under the 
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty was a very great step 
in the promotion of good feeling. Yet the mode 
of abandonment was subjected to diligent, not 
to say suspicious, scrutiny by the American 
Senate. Secretary Hay and Sir Julian Paunce- 
fote concluded a treaty in February, 1900, that 
the Senate refused to approve except with 
amendments. In this draft Great Britain re- 
nounced all right to participate in the construc- 
tion, ownership, or maintenance of a canal, but 
assumed jointly with the United States, and 
such other powers as should be willing, respon- 
sibility for the neutrality of the work. Even- 
tually the American extremists had their way, 
and the United States was left in sole control 
of neutralization as well as of construction 



332 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

and maintenance. A new convention was con- 
cluded by Messrs. Hay and Pauncefote Novem- 
ber 1 8, 1901, and duly ratified, under which the 
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty was formally *' super- 
seded," and the United States was left with an 
entirely free hand in respect to any trans- 
isthmian canal, save that the general principle 
of neutralization was declared to be left unim- 
paired, and the American Government formally 
adopted as the basis of neutralization the rules 
which were in force as to the Suez Canal. 

A little over a year after this notable achieve- 
ment Secretary Hay and Sir Michael Herbert, 
Pauncefote's successor at the embassy, signed 
a convention sending the Alaskan boundary 
to arbitration. The tribunal agreed upon was 
of the sort that the United States had been 
willing to accept in 1899, namely, a joint com- 
mission of six jurists, three designated by each 
government. Such a tribunal was duly con- 
stituted, Great Britain being represented by the 
Lord Chief-Justice Baron Alverstone and two 
distinguished Canadians, the United States by 
the Secretary of War Mr. Root and two prom- 
inent Senators. A decision was announced by 
this tribunal October 20, 1903, in which all 
the seriously contested points were determined 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 333 

in favor of the United States, by a majority 
consisting of Lord Alverstone and the three 
Americans. 

Thus passed finally to rest the boundary 
contention that had tried the tempers of the 
English-speaking peoples continuously since 
the beginning of their history as neighbors. 
Until some new and unforeseen acquisition of 
territory by one or the other of the nations 
shall take place, no further differences of this 
sort seem possible. Every yard of the four- 
thousand-mile line along which the British and 
American domains are contiguous, from the 
Bay of Fundy to the point where the 141st 
meridian intersects the shore of the Arctic 
Ocean, is now fixed, and most of them marked, 
by the most precise methods known to modern 
science. Yet eternal vigilance alone can assure 
the maintenance of the certainty that has been 
provided. It was, in fact, one incident of the 
era of good international feeling that we are 
describing that Messrs. Bryce and Root were 
able to conclude in 1908 a convention providing 
for the verification and re-marking of the line 
from the eastern extremity to the Pacific. 

This annus mirabilis of diplomatic achieve- 
ment produced also a convention that secured 



334 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

to American and Canadian officers of the law 
having prisoners in their custody reciprocal 
rights of transit across one another's territory, 
and further removed the rather mediaeval re- 
strictions imposed by the customs laws of the 
two governments upon the rendering of aid to 
disabled mariners, in waters traversed by the 
international boundary, by vessels belonging 
on the other side of the line. It became a 
new bond uniting the English-speaking peoples, 
that through the efforts of Messrs. Root and 
Bryce a Canadian captain on Lake Erie might 
go to the aid of a disabled ship in American 
water without exposure to heavy penalties under 
the laws of the United States. 

Four other conventions marked this period. 
The only one that need detain us was that 
through which a definite term was put to the 
controversies touching the North Atlantic fish- 
eries. After the sharp clash in the eighties^ 
between the United States and Canada, there 
followed nearly twenty years of substantial 
calm. Not till 1905 was there a revival of 
trouble. In that year the government of New- 
foundland gave up the practice of licensing the 
American fishermen and assumed toward them 

• See above, p. 278. 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 335 

an attitude that raised anew all the old con- 
troversies. The colony sought to prescribe 
regulations for fishing, even on the treaty coast, 
that were held by the Americans to be wholly 
destructive to their business. Diplomacy in- 
tervened and, by resort to a new modus vivendi, 
preserved the peace until an agreement to arbi- 
trate was arrived at. The procedure of the 
British Government in this matter aroused 
sharp resentment in Newfoundland, and con- 
formity by the colonial authorities to the 
prescriptions of the cabinet at London was 
insured only by a threat of force. 

While this situation was giving cause for 
vexation, Messrs. Root and Bryce, in the course 
of their treaty-making progress, signed on April 
8, 1908, an arbitration convention that suc- 
ceeded in winning the approval of the American 
Senate. It was no such broad and comprehen- 
sive agreement as that framed by Olney and 
Pauncefote in 1897. Yet it served its pur- 
pose in the trend of world movement; for it 
took its form under the influence and pre- 
scription of The Hague Conference, and ex- 
pressed the concurrence of the English-speaking 
peoples in the beneficent work of that assembly. 
By the treaty a dispute concerning the inter- 



336 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

pretation of a treaty is to be referred by a 
special agreement to the permanent Court of 
Arbitration at The Hague. Such agreement 
must in the United States be submitted to the 
Senate for approval, and in Great Britain may 
be subject to the concurrence of any self-gov- 
erning dominion whose interests are affected 
by the matter at issue. That the fisheries 
dispute fell within the provisions of this arbi- 
tration treaty, and that the fact was keenly 
present to the minds of the negotiators, may be 
inferred from the fact that under the same 
date as the signature of the treaty a special 
agreement under its provisions was signed by 
Messrs. Root and Bryce, referring to The Hague 
Tribunal the interpretation of the fisheries 
article of the treaty of 1818 between the United 
States and Great Britain. This agreement, 
put in effect by exchange of notes March 4, 
1909, insured a settlement of practically all the 
issues of this century-old controversy. 

The presentation of the case to the tribunal 
took place in the summer of 1910, and the 
decision was made on September 7 of that 
year. By the terms of the arbitration the 
judgment of the tribunal was called for on 
seven questions. In these were summed up 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 337 

the chief points in the long controversies be- 
tween the two governments. The character 
of the tribunal's answers is a conclusive ref- 
utation of the charges, made throughout the 
century of conflict by hotheads on each side, 
that its rights were so clear as to leave delib- 
erate aggression the only explanation of the 
acts of the other side. On practically every 
point the judgment of the tribunal was so 
framed as to recognize merit in the contention 
of each side. 

The decision on all the issues was accepted 
with perfect good temper by all parties. It was 
decided that Canada and Newfoundland had 
the right to make reasonable regulations for the 
fishing on the shores to which the Americans 
had access by treaty; but in case of dispute 
as to what was reasonable, neither of the gov- 
ernments concerned, but an impartial tribunal, 
must have the authority to answer the ques- 
tion. It was decided that Americans fishing 
on the treaty shores might hire natives to aid 
in the work, but that the natives so employed 
did not thereby gain immunity from the laws 
of the jurisdiction, or, in terms of the concrete 
situation involved: the American fishermen had 
the right to man their ships with Newfound- 



338 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

landers, as was the general practice, and the 
colonial government had the right to prohibit 
the Newfoundlanders to sers'e and punish them 
for serving, as was also becoming a practice. 
It was decided that the American fishermen 
ought not to be subjected to the custom-house 
requirements and harbor dues that applied to 
commercial shipping; that they were not, 
however, excluded from the privileges of com- 
mercial shipping, provided that they did not 
try to enjoy the liberty of fishing and the priv- 
ilege of trading at the same time. Finally, 
on the ver\^ important question as to what 
constituted "bays,'' in the sense in which the 
Americans had by treaty the right to fish in 
them, it was decided that where the arm of the 
sea did not exceed ten miles in width at its 
mouth, the coast-line should be considered as 
running from headland to headland, while 
elsewhere it should follow the sinuosities of the 
shore, save that for a considerable number of 
indentations the shore line at their mouths was 
specifically described in the decision. 

The result of this arbitration, completed by 
the supplementary proceedings called for, left 
apparently no opportunity for a renewal of 
friction in connection with the Atlantic fish- 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 339 

eries. As to the seals in the Pacific Ocean, 
whose diminishing numbers at the breeding- 
places in the Behring Sea gave great concern 
to the United States, an agreement was reached 
in the summer of 191 1 by the four powers 
chiefly concerned, Great Britain, the United 
States, Russia, and Japan, prohibiting pelagic 
hunting for a period of fifteen years. This 
involved the temporary extinction of a large 
industry of British Columbia in order to avoid 
the utter destruction of the fur-seals. 

By this time no controverted question of 
right remained to make trouble so far as con- 
cerned the relations of the United States and 
Canada. Commercial policy oft'ered, however, 
as for the last half-century, inviting opportuni- 
ties for modifications and improvements. In 
both countries there were indications of serious 
discontent with the existing high tariffs. The 
American revision of 1909 ^^"as followed by an 
overwhelming defeat of the Republicans in the 
elections, in which tariff" questions played a 
large part. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, prime minister 
of the Dominion, thereupon entered vigorously 
upon negotiations with the American Govern- 
ment for a reciprocal reduction of duties on 
the commodities most involved in the commerce 



340 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

between Canada and the United States. An 
agreement was reached with astonishing ease, 
considering the peremptory rejection of earher 
proposals, and a very far-reaching reduction 
of rates was scheduled, subject to the approval 
of the respective legislatures. At Washington 
this approval was readily secured; at Ottawa 
it was opposed with vehemence, and on appeal 
to the constituencies the government met with 
an overwhelming defeat. Canada thus rejected 
with something of contempt an arrangement 
that would have brought her enormous economic 
benefits — an arrangement that she had often 
sought with almost humble diligence from the 
United States. 

The decisive factor in bringing about this 
abrupt reversal of Canadian policy was the 
spirit of nationality. Inept comments by prom- 
inent American statesmen on the situation dur- 
ing the electoral campaign were diligently inter- 
preted in Canada to mean that the ready assent 
to reciprocity was a first deliberate step towards 
annexation. Again, as in 1891, the Canadian 
people declared for political independence in 
preference to economic ease, as they conceived 
that alternative to be placed before them. 
Nor did it lie in the mouths of the Americans 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 341 

to chide or reproach; for every argument, 
whether sound or merely silly, that was used in 
Canada to resist the demand for freer trade 
with the United States had been used with 
effect in the United States, in a dozen campaigns, 
to resist the demand for freer trade with Great 
Britain. The national spirit was producing 
in Canada the identical phenomena that had 
attended the growth of the United States to its 
magnificent estate of independence and power. 
Hence no bad blood was made by the failure 
of reciprocity. The Americans looked serenely 
on while the great Dominion displayed the 
same spirit, in maintaining economic independ- 
ence at the end of the century of peace, that 
the little Canadian provinces had displayed at 
the beginning of that century, in maintaining 
their political and military independence. 

The harmony between Britain and America 
was the leading factor in another effort to pro- 
mote the cause of general arbitration. With 
the seriously qualified success of this undertak- 
ing the diplomatic record of the hundred years 
of peace was substantially completed. In the 
summer of 191 1 a form of agreement was de- 
vised which referred to arbitral procedure all 
international controversies that were "justici- 



342 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

able." Treaties embodying this agreement were 
concluded by the United States with Great 
Britain and also with France. But the objec- 
tions that found their home in the American 
Senate were too strong to be overcome. That 
body gave its approval of the treaties only after 
amending them so as to make each party for it- 
self the final judge as to whether a dispute was 
justiciable, and further excluding altogether 
from the provisions of the treaties several cat- 
egories of differences, notably those involving 
the Monroe Doctrine. These amendments left 
the treaties barren of all the advance that had 
been hoped for toward general arbitration. 

Such was the situation when the centennial 
of the Treaty of Ghent drew near. The sharp 
exchange of notes about the Venezuelan bound- 
ary in 1895 had been followed by the estab- 
lishment of ostentatiously cordial diplomatic re- 
lations between the two great English-speaking 
nations; and this had been followed in turn, 
after the outbreak of the Spanish War, by 
demonstrations of good feeling, both official 
and unofficial, that were quite unprecedented 
for warmth as well as for generality. The few 
discordant notes — in America over the fate of 
the Boers, in Canada over the outcome of the 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 343 

Alaskan boundary arbitration, among Irishmen 
perennially and everywhere — were barely dis- 
coverable by the acutest observers amid the 
multifold chorus of amity. 

There was especial significance in this sit- 
uation from the fact that it was accompanied 
by a remarkable transformation in the ideals 
and principles of both British and American 
political systems. In the last quarter of the 
century of peace his Britannic Majesty's do- 
minions became very distinctly a federative 
empire, and the United States became no less 
unmistakably an imperialistic republic. The 
earliest evidence of a tendency in these direc- 
tions had been the occasion of reciprocal resent- 
ment and hostility on the part of Great Britain 
and the United States. The southern and 
westward expansion of the American Republic 
in the first half of the nineteenth century caused, 
as we have seen, much uneasiness and dissat- 
isfaction to the British Government; yet the 
absorption of the Spanish dominions in the 
West Indies and the Far East at the century's 
end evoked that government's cordial approval. 
So on the other side the earlier steps toward 
the development and utilization of Canadian 
resources for distinctively imperial purposes 



344 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

was followed with truculence in the United 
States; while the later creation of the strongest 
commercial and political bonds between the 
United Kingdom and the Dominion has been 
viewed with placid content. It would seem 
to augur well for the perpetuity of peace be- 
tween the greatest of the English-speaking 
peoples, that each approves the policy that 
enhances the power and prestige of the other. 
The general causes that have operated to pro- 
duce this situation are worthy of brief con- 
sideration; for in them we shall see again the 
forces that have from the beginning of our 
century wrought for English-speaking harmony, 
despite all the temporary' influences that have 
from time to time prevailed against them. 

The distinct assumption by the United States 
of the imperialistic character and responsibil- 
ities coincided precisely in time with the warm- 
est manifestations of cordiality on the part 
of Great Britain. President Roosevelt's ad- 
ministrations (1901-09) teemed with incidents 
announcing the new role of the American 
Republic. The Philippines were relentlessly 
reduced to order and subjection; Panama was 
"taken" for the sake of the world's commerce, 
if incidentally for the specific military and 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 345 

commercial advantage of the taker; Cuba was 
summarily denied by superior force indulgence 
in her long-wonted pastime of civil war — all 
these by virtue of conditions produced directly 
by the war with Spain. Indirect results of this 
war were no less striking. American troops 
joined with those of other great powers in 
quelling the tumult of the ''Boxers" in China, 
and American diplomacy wrought effectively to 
maintain the open door in Chinese trade and 
the ver\' existence (*' administrative entity," 
Secretary Hay obscurely called it) of native 
government in China, when the rivalry of 
Russia and Japan threatened it with extinc- 
tion. The terrific clash of arms between these 
two powers was brought to an end on the soil 
of the United States and through the agency 
o( its chief executive. It became suddenly 
apparent to all the world that the American 
democracy was a force of the first magnitude 
in the general international situation. 

The effect of this revelation was not without 
its humor to the philosophical observ^er. In the 
world and the half-world of universal politics 
rumor and gossip ran wild over the possible 
results of the new phenomenon. Veteran dip- 
lomats saw copious visions and retired admirals 



346 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

dreamed horrid dreams. Periodical literature 
teemed with speculation as to the influence of 
the American position on the various ententes 
and numerical alliances, dual, triple, quadruple, 
on which the peace of the world was supposed 
to rest. The navy of the United States was 
taken in hand by the theoretical experts, and 
subjected to the mathematical scrutiny from 
which the guild derives its sufficient conclu- 
sions as to future relations of the nations. 
Almost before the Treaty of Portsmouth was 
ratified, the prophets had the broad breast of 
the Pacific tumultuous with the rivalry of 
America and Japan and convulsed with hypo- 
thetical battles. The results on the combat- 
ants and the wider effects on mankind at large 
naturally varied with the fancy of the prophets, 
but in no case were unworthy of the occasion, 
or failed to involve a startling change in the 
political equilibrium of the world. 

Amid all the disquiet and suspicion created 
by the entrance of the United States upon its 
new role, there was no deviation on the part 
of Great Britain from the attitude of admir- 
ing welcome to the republic. No prognostica- 
tions of disastrous rivalry wherein the pride 
of Britain would be humbled — and there was 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 347 

abundance of such warnings — availed to stir 
up jealousy or fear. The grounds of British 
complacency were, of course, manifold. That 
the Americans, in assuming dominion over less 
developed races, would be forced to solve some 
problems by the same methods that had brought 
harsh criticism upon the British, was so cer- 
tain as to be a source of some natural satisfac- 
tion. The course of events in the Philippines 
very quickly confirmed this feeling. Beyond 
all such reasons, however, the source of British 
approval of American policy was a genuine 
joy that through it English institutions and 
traditions, however modified by transmission 
through the United States, were to be extended 
still further in their remarkable progress over 
the world. 

Meanwhile this progress was reacting in a 
noteworthy manner on the complex political 
aggregate known as the British Empire. Till 
the ninth decade of the nineteenth century it 
remained the basic conviction of reflecting 
politicians in England that the destiny of the 
self-governing colonies was independence. The 
grip of Cobden's dogma was strong twenty 
years after he himself had passed away. No 
way of escape from disintegration of the empire 



348 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

could be thought of that did not involve un- 
thinkable readjustments in the government of 
the United Kingdom, as to structure or policy 
or both. In the eighties, however, conditions 
in both foreign and domestic affairs brought 
the unthinkable peremptorily under consid- 
eration. Germany's colonial ambitions and 
Russia's advance on India suggested sickening 
possibilities as to the fate of an Australasian 
state that should lack the protection of the 
British navy; Gladstone's proposal of home 
rule for Ireland made the remodelling of the 
British Government a staple of daily debate. 
Under these circumstances a demand for some 
strengthening of the bonds uniting colonies 
and motherland became vigorously manifest 
throughout her Majesty's dominions. 

The formula of this demand in the eighties 
was "imperial federation," on behalf of which 
an imposing agitation was carried on for some 
years. Official support for this particular form 
of union was for various practical reasons slow 
and scanty, and the movement under this 
name lost its force in the early nineties, not 
without having contributed, however, a great 
impulse to the cause of preserving the empire 
intact. Meanwhile a procedure for the discus- 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 349 

sion and solution of pressing concrete problems 
opened a way through which, more Britannico^ 
the broad considerations of constitutional theory 
were sidetracked and imperial consolidation was 
approached by the slow but sure pathway of 
extra-constitutional experiment. In 1887, on 
the occasion of Queen Victoria's jubilee, a con- 
ference of colonial representatives was held at 
London under the auspices of the colonial 
secretary. Its consultations were of little ef- 
fect save in revealing a basis of common in- 
terest in the widely scattered members of the 
empire. As was prophesied by Lord Salisbury, 
however, this meeting became ''the parent of a 
long progeniture"; for such conferences have 
become an established feature of the imperial 
system, assembling every four years, and act- 
ing under a well-defined constitution. This 
imperial conference is, in fact, a new and sig- 
nificant organ of policy and administration for 
his British Majesty's dominions. In its de- 
liberations have taken shape the policies which 
in recent years have done so much to increase 
the force of the British Empire. The obstacles 
to be overcome, in the shape of conflicting 
interests and the spirit of local independence, 
have not availed to thwart the trend toward 



3 so VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

imperial unity. A general system of naval and 
military organization and action has been put 
into operation; tariff preferences, varying in 
scope and volume, have been generally estab- 
lished in reciprocity among the subordinate 
members of the empire, with the United King- 
dom enjoying in most cases a unilateral ad- 
vantage; a great impulse has been given to 
exclusively British lines of communication and 
transportation. These and many other in- 
stances of consolidating activity reveal the 
widely scattered dominions of the British crown, 
though geographically so discontinuous, as a 
very effective unity. 

In the process through which imperial unity 
has been practically realized there has been 
a mighty, if subtle, reaction of the colonial 
spirit upon the motherland. Canada, South 
Africa, Australia, New Zealand are democratic 
in their social structure and their political 
ideals. Two of them embody the most ad- 
vanced democracies in the world. An im- 
perial council in which a leading part is played 
by the chosen representatives of such com- 
munities must inevitably take color in its 
resolutions from the programme of radicalism. 
The colonial secretary who goes from a dis- 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 351 

cussion In the imperial conference to a debate 
on social legislation in the House of Commons 
can hardly fail to carry with him some infection 
of the ideas that are current coin in Australia. 
Wherever the delegates from beyond the seas 
are brought in contact unofficially with the 
political issues most agitated in the United 
Kingdom, it is not the conservative views that 
are supported by the recitals of experience in 
the colonies. What to the English radical is 
ultimate ideal, to the colonial conservative is a 
commonplace of actuality. Even Irish home 
rule, that smacks so perilously of disintegra- 
tion to many of the wisest minds of England, 
offers nothing of terror to the colonial; for he 
sees autonomy and unity reconciled in diverse 
but sufficient ways, in the Dominion of Canada, 
the Commonwealth of Australia, and the Union 
of South Africa. Popular self-government is 
so fundamental in the political philosophy of 
the English beyond the seas that the full appli- 
cation of the principle to the United Kingdom 
appears only normal. A Canadian or an Aus- 
tralian is not likely to see anything alarming in 
a project for the transformation of the govern- 
ment of the United Kingdom in the federal 
sense; while the union of all parts of the British 



352 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

world under something in the nature of a 
federative bond makes a strong appeal to every 
EngHsh-speaking group that treasures the tra- 
ditions and achievements of the race. 

By every step toward the closer union of the 
scattered parts of the British Empire the more 
general solidarity of the English-speaking peo- 
ples has been brought nearer. For every such 
step signalizes the democratizing pro tanto of 
social and political ideals and institutions in 
the United Kingdom, and the realization thus 
of conditions that promote harmony with the 
American Republic. An intimate like-minded- 
ness is, as was said at the beginning of this 
review, the indispensable factor in permanent 
international amity. The whole trend of mod- 
ern development in civilization is strongly 
toward the widespread working of this factor. 
Its influence is most marked, however, where 
historical identity of language and tradition 
clears the way. The people of the United 
Kingdom and the people of the United States 
are drawing nearer each other daily in both the 
material and the spiritual aspects of life. What 
has been expected to retard, has in fact accel- 
erated the movement. Nervous Britons strike 
out for a closer union of all the parts of the 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 353 

empire, to check the influence of the United 
States — and the resuh is an access of democ- 
racy from AustraUa that makes American ideas 
inviting by comparison. Americans rush into 
war to uphold the cause of humanity and in- 
dependence for oppressed peoples — and find 
themselves struggling to carry, in the most ap- 
proved British manner, the burden of distant 
and barbarous dependencies. But the federa- 
tive empire of the Britons and the imperialistic 
republic of the Americans ate more neighborly 
after than before their transforming experiments. 

The hundred years of peace for which John 
Quincy Adams politely, if not very hopefully, 
prayed after the signing of the treaty of De- 
cember 24, 1 8 14, have become realized his- 
tory. The gates of Janus, closed at Ghent, 
have not been opened for a century. The 
pacific years have brought changes, however, 
more amazing than could have been wrought 
by the desolating arts of war. It is not so 
clear in the twentieth as it was in the nine- 
teenth century that the nerve centre of the 
English-speaking world is in Great Britain. 
The United Kingdom, with its 45,000,000 of 
population, is a wonderful aggregate of ma- 



354 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

terial and spiritual forces. Yet it does not 
stand out so incontestably the chief reservoir 
of such forces as was the case a century earher, 
when it numbered but 19,000,000 souls. Then 
it dominated the Enghsh-speaking peoples of 
the earth commercially, industrially, intellec- 
tually, and, save the United States, polit- 
ically. Its dependencies were already vast in 
extent, but none contained more inhabitants 
of British origin than Canada, where there 
were hardly 250,000. To-day the dependen- 
cies include, in addition to Canada, with its 
7,500,000 people, Australia, with some 4,500,- 
000, New Zealand, with 1,000,000, and South 
Africa, with another 1,000,000 of whites, among 
whom the English type is somewhat modified 
by the Dutch. The reaction of these great 
progressive communities upon the mother-land 
is altogether too significant to be disregarded, 
and it is growing from year to year. Domi- 
nation, in any such sense as was accurate in 
1 8 14, cannot be predicated of the United 
Kingdom. It is now but the most powerful 
member of a larger unity, the British Empire, 
already in fact, and rapidly becoming in name, 
a federation of English-speaking states. 
Outside of this political and cultural aggre- 



VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 355 

gate the English-speaking world presents only 
the American Republic. Its population, nearly 
100,000,000, includes probably three-fifths of 
the English-speaking people of the earth, fifty 
per cent more than inhabit the British Empire. 
Geographically the United States presents the 
most striking contrast with that empire — the 
one territorially continuous, the other a series 
of widely scattered areas. Socially, econom- 
ically, and politically the contrasts, while 
apparently great, shrink remarkably on close 
examination. Institutions that characterize the 
old, wealthy, and highly developed society of 
England have appeared, at least in rudimen- 
tary form, in many of the first-settled, richer, 
and more prosperous States of the American 
Union. The institutions, on the other hand, 
that are typical of the sparse and primitive 
communities of Canada, Australia, and South 
Africa have their perfect counterpart on the 
plains and arid plateaus in the western half of 
the United States. Between the American 
people and the people of the British Empire as 
a whole there are the political and cultural 
conditions of a complete understanding and 
sympathy. History and traditions, when prop- 
erly interpreted, must contribute to the same 



356 VENEZUELA— AND AFTER 

end. There seems no reason, therefore, to sup- 
pose that the next hundred years will show less 
progress than the last in cordial relations among 
the English-speaking peoples. 



CHAPTER VIII 
CONCLUSION 

The discussion of international relations is 
almost invariably tainted with the fallacy of 
too sweeping generalization. This is as true 
of historical as of argumentative discussion. 
It has been copiously illustrated in the events 
narrated in the preceding chapters. It may 
doubtless be found illustrated by the narrative 
itself; for the vice inheres in the very structure 
and function of language. A crisis or a policy 
of vital import to the English-speaking peoples 
has more than once had its origin in some 
jaunty judgment that Great Britain despised the 
United States, or that Canada was enamoured 
of annexation, or that America hated the 
English, when in truth the emotions referred 
to could be predicated only of some individual 
or group in the respective nations. The editor 
of the London Times or The Saturday Review 
has been taken for Great Britain, Goldwin 
Smith for Canada, and any one of a dozen 

357 



3S8 CONCLUSION 

politicians of Celtic extraction or sympathies 
for America. These and similar identifica- 
tions have figured largely in the historical writ- 
ings of the century, with distracting results. 
There has been on the whole overemphasis on 
the evidences of ill feeling among the English- 
speaking peoples. The influence of the episodes 
that gave rise to diplomatic friction has been 
exaggerated. Forces that worked unceasingly 
and powerfully for good feeling have been 
ignored. An ingrained diplomatic policy, a 
strong and popular personality, an expedient 
of party strategy or a demand of an insistent 
economic interest has been treated as a con- 
clusive index of the national spirit, whereas 
such spirit is justly discoverable only in a care- 
ful synthesis of these elements. Surveyed with 
proper reference to this fact, our review of the 
century of peace may be summarized as follows : 
The hundred years fall into four fairly well 
distinguishable periods. In the first, 1814-1835, 
the key to Anglo-American relations is to be 
found in Great Britain's foreign policy in Eu- 
rope and her internal politics. In the second, 
1 836-1 860, the controlling feature is the growth 
of the United States in population and terri- 
tory. The third, 1861-1885, takes its character 



CONCLUSION 359 

from the American Civil War. The fourth, 
1886-1914, turns on the projection of American 
and British interests and influence beyond the 
bounds of the United States and the United 
Kingdom. 

In the first period there was a gradual prog- 
ress from the bitterness that the war made 
intense in America and Canada to a condition 
of general amity. The Treaty of Ghent put 
an end to flagrant war; it did little or nothing 
for the promotion of lasting peace. It did not 
weaken the conviction in the minds of many 
Americans that a leading principle of British 
policy was to bully and dragoon the United 
States into a condition of dependence as near 
as possible to that which had been thrown off 
in 1776; it did not extinguish the fear among 
the English in Canada that the United States 
was resolutely bent on conquering and annex- 
ing them; it did not qualify the belief wide- 
spread among the ruling aristocracy in England 
that the American democracy was a barbarous, 
brawling political organism, whose growth was 
to be restricted by all possible means in the 
interest of civilization. For each of these 
various beliefs there was not lacking a certain 
foundation in fact; and the progress toward 



36o CONCLUSION 

amity was measured by the transformation of 
the facts. 

The diplomacy of this period made some 
important contributions to the perpetuation 
of the peace secured at Ghent. The Rush- 
Bagot arrangement was the chief of them. An 
influential element of American opinion was con- 
ciliated by the limited access to the inshore 
fisheries conceded by Great Britain in 1818, 
though the concession embodied potentialities 
of trouble. So far as the Monroe Doctrine 
may be regarded as a product of diplomacy, it 
must stand high in the records of this period. 
Whether its function was pacific, or ever will 
be so, is doubtful. At the time of its announce- 
ment, however, it unquestionably promoted 
good feeling between the British and the Amer- 
ican peoples. A like effect was produced by 
the modification in commercial policy through 
which the bars were let down for the American 
traders in the West Indies. On the other side 
was felt throughout the period the exasperat- 
ing operation of the failure to get together on 
the right of search and in respect to the north- 
eastern boundary of the United States. No 
amount of concession by the British Govern- 
ment on other points could keep down the 



i 



CONCLUSION 361 

American's gorge at the thought that the 
right was still claimed to inflict on American 
vessels and seamen the humiliations that were 
common before 181 5. This feeling in the 
United States and the irritation in Canada and 
New Brunswick over what was felt to be the 
unfounded claims of the Americans as to the 
boundary were the chief factors of popular 
ill feeling that survived to the end of this first 
period. The spectacular triumphs of the Whigs 
over the Tories in the United Kingdom tended 
greatly to reduce the springs of animosity 
among the Americans in reference to the 
British in general. 

Our second period began with trouble, and 
trouble among the English-speaking peoples 
was continuous almost to the end. There was 
insurrection in Canada and exasperating bor- 
der incidents. The northeastern boundary pro- 
duced a grist of friction and popular excite- 
ment. Antislavery authorities in the British 
West Indies took doubtful liberties with Amer- 
ican slaves and ships. The singular sequence 
of serious controversies dissipated the general 
friendliness and introduced a persistent con- 
dition of distrust and acrimony. Webster and 
Ashburton succeeded in settling the north- 



362 CONCLUSION 

eastern boundary and some other points of 
contention, but many were left, including the 
right of search. The American democracy 
was fully embarked on its career of expansion. 
Led by the men of the mighty West, it pro- 
ceeded to realize its *' manifest destiny" in 
Texas, in Oregon, and in California. Half the 
total coast of the Gulf of Mexico and half the 
total Pacific coast of North America were the 
modest limits of its demands. Great Britain, 
congenital mistress of the seas and sovereign 
over Canada and the Hudson's Bay Company, 
had necessarily to take notice of these pro- 
ceedings. She saved part of Oregon, but her 
projects for Texas and California gave way 
before the resolute aggression of Polk. Through 
the war with Mexico the United States realized 
its alleged destiny. In the very month in 
which peace was concluded the golden secret 
of the Sierras was disclosed at Sutter's Mill, 
and the adventurous of all the earth started 
for California. At once the Central American 
isthmus became one of the greatest highways 
of the world, and as promptly appeared the 
clash between British and /American claims and 
interests in Nicaragua. The Cla\*ton-Bulwer 
Treaty, and ten years of harassing negotia- 



^ 



CONCLUSION 363 

tion to determine what It meant, followed this 
development. 

The events on which these two decades of 
diplomacy turned were replete with incidents 
that stirred the passions of the peoples and 
made much bad blood between them. At the 
same time other events in the national life 
of all concerned worked clearly for friendship 
and good feeling. Free trade became the com- 
mercial policy of both Great Britain and the 
United States. The whole democratic spirit 
of Cobden and Bright became influential In 
British politics and won the approval of Amer- 
icans. Palmerston's foreign policy after 1848, 
whatever its inconsistencies, was at least favor- 
able to the Liberals of the Continent. In this 
again American opinion was conciliated. The 
exiled heroes of unsuccessful revolt on the 
Continent — Kossuth, Garibaldi, Schurz — found 
equal welcome in England and the United 
States; and those who gave the welcome 
could not but feel drawn to each other. Com- 
mon sympathy with Magyars and Italians and 
Germans tended somewhat to counteract the 
effect of the wide divergence of sympathies 
In respect to the Irish. Canadians and Amer- 
icans, whose antipathies rose high at the be- 



364 CONCLUSION 

ginning of this period, were at its close once 
more on cordial terms through the Reciprocity 
Treaty of 1854. There was indeed, in i860, 
a general spirit of trans-Atlantic friendliness 
among the English-speaking peoples, to which 
the visit of the youthful Prince of Wales in the 
United States and Canada was a witness. The 
American Republic itself was, however, per- 
meated with the animosities of the sections, 
and the fiercest antipathies that ever divided 
English-speaking peoples were about to be 
manifested in the conflict between North and 
South. 

The period of the American Civil War was 
one of utter distraction, as to both feeling 
and convictions, among the English-speaking 
peoples. From the outset there was in both 
the warring sections as much fear and distrust 
of Great Britain as hatred of each other. 
British sentiment was at the same time almost 
as badly divided as American. No assertion 
could be more inaccurate than that the British 
in general favored the South. There was a 
large and influential body of Southern sympa- 
thizers, moved by the conviction that the 
secession rested on a just claim to independence 
and self-government. There was an equally 



! 



CONCLUSION 365 

convinced body of Northern sympathizers, 
moved by hatred of slavery and hope that it 
would be extinguished. In both these bodies 
alike the prevailing expectation was, till late 
in the course of the struggle, that the dis- 
ruption of the American Republic would be 
permanent. This expectation, rather than sym- 
pathy with the South, was the basis of Glad- 
stone's declaration, proclaimed with such shock- 
ing indiscretion at Newcastle, that Jefferson 
Davis had created a nation, and of Edward A. 
Freeman's famous title-page, "History of Fed- 
eral Government ... to the Disruption of 
the United States." Satisfied that but one 
outcome was possible, the great mass of Brit- 
ish sentiment watched with but the sightseer's 
interest the course of events through which the 
inevitable end was to be reached. This atti- 
tude was the substantial foundation of the gov- 
ernment's policy of neutrality. The good faith 
of Palmerston and Russell in the assumption 
of this policy is now beyond question; the lack 
of entire success in its execution is equally 
clear. The South complained as bitterly as 
the North of British policy; only the victo- 
rious North got satisfaction. If the South had 
established its independence, Great Britain 



366 CONCLUSION 

\ 
might have had double grievances to settle for. j 

As it was, she settled with more grace than 
could fairly be anticipated the cost of her 
errors in respect to the North. Whatever 
grounds she had for contesting the claims of the 
United States, her position was almost hope- 
lessly weakened from the outset by the staring 
fact that the result of the American war was 
precisely that which highly respected leaders of 
British opinion had assumed to be impossible. 

The Treaty of Washington of 1871, with the 
arbitrations that followed, signified the recog- 
nition by the other English-speaking peoples 
that the American Republic was a new and 
permanent species of political organism. It 
signified the acceptance of democracy as a 
respectable mode of national existence. It 
marked the transition in British politics from 
the regime of Whigs and Tories to that of 
Liberals and Conservatives, from Palmerston 
and Russell to Gladstone and Bright, from 
Aberdeen and Derby to Disraeli and Salisbury. 
Throughout the English-speaking world the 
democratic spirit was visibly transforming in- 
stitutions. In the United Kingdom it gave 
the suffrage to a million hitherto excluded men 
of the working class, made education more 



CONCLUSION 367 

accessible to the poor, began the transfer of 
the land of Ireland from the aristocracy to the 
Irish tenant farmers. In the United States 
it raised four millions of negroes from chattel 
slavery to civil and political equality with their 
former masters. In Australia and British Amer- 
ica it dominated in every respect the great 
expansion of these communities that charac- 
terized the period. The Dominion of Canada 
was established, to parallel on the north of the 
United States the development of free institu- 
tions across the continent. With whatever 
disparity of population and resources, the new 
Dominion exhibited as distinctly as its great 
neighbor the qualities of a progressive, inde- 
pendent, and self-sufficient democracy. 

Our fourth period opens with friction be- 
tween the two neighbors in North America. 
Both peoples were in the course of marvellous 
internal development. The two oceans were 
bound together by railways and the vast in- 
terior spaces of the continent were becoming 
peopled and prosperous on both sides of the 
astronomical line that alone marked them off 
as distinct. Along all the thousands of miles 
of this line no incident occurred to arouse the 
concern of the governments, but the tide-water 



368 CONCLUSION 

at each end of it was in the eighties stirred with 
conflict. On the Atlantic the inshore fisheries 
again caused trouble; on the Pacific the fur- 
seals of Alaska. Both disputes were duly set- 
tled by rational administration and finally by 
arbitration. Then came the successive man- 
ifestations of American self-consciousness in 
connection with Samoa, Hawaii, Chile, Cuba. 
A restless, sensitive condition of the popular 
mind was discernible to an acute observer. 
The British Foreign Office for some reason failed 
to note this phenomenon. Likewise unno- 
ticed was the coincidence of a high-strung and 
irritable chief executive at Washington with a 
cynical quondam Saturday Reviezv essayist as 
foreign minister in Downing Street. The in- 
ternal politics of both nations contributed con- 
ditions that favored an explosion, and the 
explosion duly occurred. 

Cleveland's policy as to the Venezuelan 
boundary announced to the world, with seismic 
suddenness and violence, that the American 
democracy was of age. Its cherished Monroe 
Doctrine was declared the basis of much the 
same authority that European powers were 
assuming in Africa and Asia through the doc- 
trines of Hinterland and ''sphere of influence." 



CONCLUSION 369 

Once recovered from the shock caused by the 
occasion and manner of the announcement, the 
British Government and the British people were 
the first to recognize the new situation and to 
welcome it. The maintenance of peace and 
amity between the English-speaking nations 
became the goal of official and unofficial effort 
on both sides of the ocean. With the Spanish- 
American War came the convincing demonstra- 
tions of good feeling on the part of the British 
for the United States. From this event dates 
unbroken cordiality to the end of the hun- 
dred years of peace. Diplomacy, directly or 
through arbitration, settled all the old disputes 
that threatened tension. Progress was made 
toward the comprehensive substitution of pa- 
cific for warlike means in dealing with all kinds 
of controversies. Canada waxed great and 
prosperous on the frontier of the United States, 
and proclaimed an unmistakable purpose to 
remain the rival rather than become in any 
sense the appendage of the republic; Aus- 
tralia, New Zealand, South Africa developed 
into progressive democratic commonwealths; 
and all these powerful political societies moved 
steadily toward closer union with the United 
Kingdom in an earth-girdling federative em- 



370 CONCLUSION 

pire. Each step in the consoUdatlon of this 
mighty structure has received in the United 
States the same degree of cordial approval that 
Great Britain displayed when the United 
States set forth on its imperialistic career 
among the ruins of the Spanish dominion. 

The century of peace ends with the English- 
speaking world comprehended in two great 
political aggregates, differing much from each 
other in obvious characteristics, but permeated 
in the subtler arteries of their social life with 
forces that make for like feeling and like 
thinking. The same basic conceptions of de- 
mocracy, liberty, and law prevail in both these 
organisms and determine the direction of con- 
scious progress; the growing parallelism of 
economic conditions, the long-established finan- 
cial and commercial relationships, the intimate 
solidarity of intellectual life, assure that the 
lines of unconscious progress will be the same 
in both. Everything seems to promise the 
absence of all but friendly rivalry in reciprocal 
benefits and in contribution to the welfare of 
the race. 

Our historical review has shown that in the 
relation of the English-speaking peoples there 
has been much misconception, distrust, suspi- 



CONCLUSION 371 

cion, and general Incompatibility of temper — 
that these peoples have been in a high degree 
human. But it has also shown that they have 
exhibited, on a steadily growing scale, that 
loftiest of human attributes — the will to adjust 
the frictions of social life by reason, the faculty 
that President Butler has so well designated, in 
its broadest aspect, as ''the international mind." 
Our review has shown finally, if it has been ade- 
quate and truthful, that there has persisted in 
the consciousness of these peoples, often enough 
obscurely, but none the less certainly, the feel- 
ing that some special fiat of God and nature en- 
joins enduring peace among those whose blood 
or language or institutions or traditions, or 
all together, go back historically to the snug 
little island of Britain. 



INDEX 



Aberdeen, Lord, 105, 106, 122-124, 
131, 132, 136, 137, 147, 163, 
366. 

Abyssinia, 225, 301. 
Adams, Charles Francis, 206, 208, 
215, 219, 226, 233-239, 242, 244, 

245- 
Adams, Professor E. D., 56. 
Adams, John Quincy, I, 2, 9, 12- 

18, 24, 35, 46, 54, 57-59, 212, 

353- 
Africa, 293, 301. 
Aguinaldo, 324. 
Alabama, the, 218-220, 224, 233 

et seq. 
Alabama claims, the, 233-257, 260. 
Alaska, 134, 286, 290. 
Alaskan boundary dispute, 325- 

328, 330; settlement of, 332, 

333; 343- 
Alverstone, Lord, 332, 333. 
Ambrister, Robert, execution of, 

36-39- 
Andrew, Governor, 21 1. 
Anti-Corn Law League, the, 86, 

100, 144-146. 
Arbitration, Alaskan boundary, 

332, 333; inshore fisheries, 261- 

264, 334-338; seal fisheries, 289- 

291; treaty of 1897, 318-320; 

treaty of 191 1, 341, 342. 
Arbitration, Geneva tribunal of, 

254-257; permanent court of, 

336. 
Arbuthnot, execution of, 36-39. 
Argyll, Duke of, 227. 
Aroostook River war, 102, 103. 
Ashburton, Lord, 12, 106-108, 

I16-119, 361. 
Asia, 293. 



Astoria, 125. 

Australia, 192, ig;?, 221, 293, 350, 

351. 354, 355, 369. 
Austria, 48, 231. 

Bagot, Charles, 16-19, 55. 

Bahamas, the, 218. 

Balfour, Mr., 315. 

Bank destroyed by Jackson, 78, 79. 

Baring, Alexander, 12, 106. 

Bathurst, Lord, 15. 

Bayard, Secretary, 287, 301, 303, 

304- 
Behring Sea, 285-290, 339. 
Belgium, 232. 
Belize, 160-162. 
Bentham, Jeremy, 42. 
Benthamite school, the, 43. 
Berlin, Conference of, 300. 
Bermudas, the, 169, 218. 
Bismarck, 231. 
Blaine, James G., 284, 289. 
Blockade-running, 218-220. 
Brazil, 55. 
Bright, John, I45-U7, 152, 205, 

206, 228-230, 248, 363, 366. 
British Columbia, 272, 285, 287, 

339- 
British Guiana, 301, 309, 311. 
British North American Act, the, 

270, 271. 
Brougham, 67, 100. 
Brown, George, 269. 
Bryce, Lord, 329, 333-336. 
Buchanan, President, 129-13 1, 163, 

166, 170, 171, 242. 
Bull Run, 209. 

Bulwer, Sir Henry, 158, 160, 165. 
Butler, President, 371. 
Buxton, 71. 



373 



374 



INDEX 



California, 120; acquisition of, 
134-139; 155, 162, 362. 

Canada, 7; anti-American feeling 
in, 10, 11; British views as to 
future of, II, 12; political strife 
in, 88 et seq., 173 et seq.; insur- 
rections in, 92, 93 ; raids on fron- 
tier, 93, 107, 261; Lord Dur- 
ham's report concerning, 97-100; 
constitution of 1841, uniting 
Upper and Lower, 100, 173; 
boundary dispute, loi-iii; ad- 
vance of democracy in, 174; 
French and English interests in, 
174-176; industrial depression 
in, 175-178; effect on, of free- 
trade policy, 176-178, 187; an- 
nexation agitation in, 178-184, 
296; importance to, of trade 
with United States, 187; refuge 
given by, to Confederate agents, 
220; ill feeling between United 
States and, 222; invaded by 
Irish army, 224; 231; Dominion 
of, established, 264, 266-273, 
367; influence of United States 
in formation of Dominion, 270; 
extent of Dominion of, 271; 
participation in negotiating 
Treaty of Washington, 265, 266; 
effect of Civil War in, 267; race 
antipathy in, 268; problem of 
national unity in, 272, 273; pro- 
tectionism adopted in, 274-276; 
fisheries dispute, 276-291; agita- 
tion for commercial union with 
United States, 295, 296; efforts 
to settle differences with United 
States, 324-340; proposal for 
reciprocity rejected by, 339, 340; 
national spirit in, 340, 341; pop- 
ulation, 354; 355, 361, 364, 369. 

Canadian Pacific Railway scandal, 
272, 274. 

Canning, George, 19; personality 
and policies of, 46-48; action to 
thwart intervention in behalf of 
Spain, 49-52; dissatisfaction 



with Monroe's message, 53, 54; 

fear of American alliance against 

Europe, 55-57; 58, 60, 62, 63, 66, 

104, 154, 212. 
Caroline, the, destruction of, 93- 

95, 108. 
Cass, Secretary of State, 170, 171. 
Castlereagh, Lord, 9, 14-16, 18- 

20, 38, 39, 46, 47, 58, 62, 212. 
Catholic emancipation, 66-68. 
Central America, 155-166, 172, 

362. 
Century of peace, four periods of, 

358-371- 

Chartists, the, 87, 150, 151. 

China, 345. 

Choate, Joseph H., 329. 

Civil service, "spoils system" in, 
79-81. 

Civil War, the arguments for and 
against secession, 200-204; Brit- 
ish favor for the South, 203, 
204; influence of British anti- 
slavery leaders, 205, 206; neu- 
trality proclaimed by Great 
Britain, 207-209; the Trent af- 
fair, 210-216; effect of blockade- 
running, 218, 219; grievances of 
the North and South at close 
of, 220, 221; British recognition 
of Confederacy as a belligerent, 
221, 233-236, 241-243, 253; ef- 
fects in Great Britain of North- 
ern triumph, 227-230; absorbing 
nature of domestic problems 
after, 231, 232; settlement of 
Alabama claims, 233 et seq.; ar- 
bitration of other claims, 260, 
261; general disturbance of good 
feeling during, 364-366. 

Clarendon, Lord, 153, 168, 249. 

Clay, Henry, 10, 13, 58, 75, 76. 

Clayton, Secretary of State, 157, 
158, 160, 165. 

Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, the, 158- 

^^s, 330-332, 362. 

Cleveland, President, 280, 282, 
283; foreign policy of, 302-305; 



INDEX 



375 



message suggesting war, 308- 
314; 315,368. 

Cobden, Richard, views of, 84, 85, 
100; and the Anti-Corn Law 
League, I4S-I47; 152, 183, 185, 
205, 206, 228, 248, 347, 363. 

Cockburn, Alexander, 257. 

Colonial conference of 1887 at 
London, 349. 

Colonization, 53. 

Columbia River, 96, 126, 127, 130, 

133- 
Commerce and industry in Great 
Britain, 63-66; in United States, 

39-44- 
Commerce and navigation, treaty 

of, 39-42. 
Commercial convention of 18 15, 

13- 

Congress of Vienna, 9. 

Convention of 18 18, London, 20- 
29. 

Cooper, Fenimore, 197. 

Corn Act, Canada, 177. 

Corn laws, British, 65, 66, 85; re- 
peal of, 142-146. 

Cotton, England's dependence on 
America for, 193; famine in Lan- 
cashire, 209, 218. 

Crampton, dismissal of, 167-169. 

Credit Mobllier, the, 272. 

Creek Indians, 35. 

Creole, the, mutiny on, 1 18, 119. 

Crimean War, the, 153, 163, 166, 
167, 169. 

Cuba, 56, 165, 321, 322, 345. 

Davis, Jefferson, 365. 
Delimitation of territory in 18 18, 

27-30. 
Democracy, American, 5-7, 73, 77- 

81, 138, 201, 203, 253. 
Democratic Party, anti-British 

feeling in, 166. 
Denmark, 231, 232. 
Derby, Earl of, 171, 229, 230, 241, 

366. 
Dewey, Admiral, 322. 



Dickens, Charles, 197, 198. 
Dingley, Mr., 326. 
Dingley Act, the, 298. 
Disarmament on the Great Lakes, 

12-17. 
Disraeli, 146, 152, 183, 229, 230, 

366. 
Don Pacifico debate, the, 152. 
Durham, Earl of, his mission and 

report as to Canada, 97-100; 

174. 
Dutch, 301. 
Duties, discriminating, 41. 

Edinburgh Review, the, 82. 

Elgin, Earl of, 174, 175, 180, 184, 

222. 
Emancipation Proclamation, the, 

228. 
Emerson, 197. 
Europe, American alliance against, 

feared, 55, 56. 
Everett, no. 
Expatriation, right of, 226, 242. 

Fairbanks, Senator, 326. 
Federalists, New England, 5, 
Fenians, the, 223-226, 246, 249, 

261, 270. 
Ferdinand VII, 53. 
Filibustering, 165-167. 
Fish, Secretary Hamilton, 248, 

249,253, 256. 
Fisheries, inshore, 22-26, 188-190, 

223, 261-264, 276-282, 284, 288, 

334-338._ 
Fleet-building, rivalry in, 14, 15. 
Florida, Indian troubles in, 34-38. 
Florida, the, 218, 256. 
Foreign Enlistment Act, the, 237, 

239- 
Forster, 206. 
Forsythe, 104. 
France, 48, 49, 51, 149, 150, 203, 

232, 258, 301, 342. 
Franco-Prussian War, the, 250. 
Franklin, Benjamin, 109. 



376 



INDEX 



Freeman, Edward A., 365. 
Free-trade, 143, 176-178, 182-185, 

187, 204, 363. 
French in Canada, 89 et seq., 98, 

99, 174-176, 180, 181, 268. 
French Revolution, 5, 42, 61. 
Fur-traders in Oregon, 125, 126. 

Gallatin, 13, 24, 57, 58. 

Gambler, Lord, i. 

Garibaldi, 363. 

Geneva Tribunal, the, 254-257. 

George III, 200. 

George IV, 53. 

German immigration, 150. 

Germany, 232, 292, 293, 301, 315, 

348. ' 
Ghent, Treaty of, i, 2; terms of, 8; 

9, 13, 20, 23, 24, 30, 192, 194; 

centennial of, 342; 359. 
Gladstone, 152, 183, 194, 228- 

230, 248, 249, 257, 258, 281, 300, 

348, 365, 366. 
Gold discoverv', California, 139, 

149. IS5. 362; Klondike, 325, 

Grain-raisers, British, 65. 

Grant, President, 244, 250. 

Grattan's Parliament, 143. 

Gray, Senator, 326. 

Great Britain, power and impor- 
tance of, in 1815, 2, 3; slight in- 
terest of, in Treaty of Ghent, 9; 
cordial feeling toward United 
States, 18, 33, 39; restrictive sys- 
tem of commerce in, 39-42; eco- 
nomic and political reform in, 
42-45; Whig reform in. 46 et 
seq.; commerce with Spain, 49; 
economic and general reform in, 
60 et seq.; widening of political 
interest, 69, 70; public opinion 
in, concerning Americans, 81- 
86; indignation at McLeod af- 
fair, 95; attitude toward slave- 
trade, 115, 116; opposition to 
annexation of Texas, 120-124; 
claims in Oregon, 124-134; pol- 



icy of, as to California, 135, 137; 
industry and commerce of, de- 
pendent on United States, 140; 
danger of famine in, 141; free- 
trade in, 143-146, 182-185; 
claims in Central America, 155- 
163; enlists recruits in United 
States, 167, 168; abandons claim 
to right of search, 171, 172; pro- 
tective tariff in, 176; attitude 
toward Canadian independence, 
182-186; population, i860, 192; 
economic leadership, 193; move- 
ment toward democracy, 194, 
195; feeling in, toward the 
South, 202-204; hostility to 
slavery, 204-206; influence of 
slavery on feeling toward North 
and South, 199, 204; proclama- 
tion of neutrality of, 207-209, 
218; attitude toward Southern 
demand for recognition, 209; 
toward Confederate envoys, 217, 
218; indignation over Trent af- 
fair, 211, 212; treatment of nat- 
uralized Irishmen in, 226; ef- 
fects in, of Northern victor^', 
227-230; sentiment in, against 
Russell's attitude toward Ala- 
bama claims, 240; democratic 
tendencies in, 257, 258; move- 
ment for imperial federation, 
293-295; Liberal-Unionist min- 
istry of 1895, 300; treaty with 
Venezuela, 316; sympathy with 
Americans in war with Spain, 
322, 323; willingness to abandon 
rights in isthmian canal, 331; 
transformation of political sys- 
tems, 343, 344; American imperi- 
alism approved by, 346, 347; im- 
perial consolidation of, 347-352, 
369, 370; democratic reaction of 
colonies on, 350, 351; popula- 
tion, 1815 and 1915, 353, 354; 
influences toward amity with 
United States, 357-371; demo- 
cratic spirit in, 363, 366. 



INDEX 



377 



Great Lakes, disarmament on, 

12-17. 
Grey, Earl, 60, 67. 
Greytown, 155, 157, 162, 163. 

Hague Tribunal, the, 335-338. 
Halifax commission, the, 263, 276. 
Hanover, 232. 
Hapsburgs, the, 151. 
Harrison, President, 283, 284. 
Hawaiian Islands, 304. 
Hay, Secretary, 329, 331, 332, 345. 
Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, 331, 332. 
Herbert, Sir Michael, 332. 
Herschell commission, the, 325, 

326. 
HinUrlandy 368. 
Hise, 157, 158. 

Hohenzollern monarchy, the, 231. 
Holland, 232. 
Holy Alliance, the, 52. 
Home Rule Bill, Irish, 281. 
Honduras, treaty with, 156, 157; 

160, 162, 164. 
Hudson's Bay Company, 125-127, 

271, 362. 
Hume, 100. 
Huskisson, 58, 63, 66, 186. 

Immigration to United States, 86, 

87, 150, 195, 196. 
Imperial conferences, British, 349- 

351- 
Imperial Federation League, the, 

294. 
Impressment of seamen, 20-22, 73, 

116, 117, 169, 170. 
India, 348. 
Indians, British alliance with, 34, 

35; in Florida, 35-38. 
Intercolonial Railway, the, 274. 
Ireland, 67, 141; the great famine 

in, 146-148; 150, 225, 226; home 

rule, 348. 351; 367. 
Irish-Americans, 143, 223,224, 281, 

284. 
Irish immigration, 150, 195, 196. 



Irish Land Act, the, 258. 

Irish, naturalized, in Great Britain, 
226, 227. 

Irish Parliament, O'Connell's agi- 
tation, for, 142, 143. 

Irish Repealers, the, 151. 

Irving, Washington, 197. 

Isthmian canal question, 155 et 
seq., 330-332. 

Italians, the, 151, 363. 

Italy, 301. 

Iturbide, 55. 

Jackson, Andrew, 8, 34-38, 59, 77- 

79, 88, 103. 
Jacksonian democracy, 75, 77, 79, 

81. 
Jameson's raid, 314. 
Japan, 339, 345, 346. 
Jay's treaty, 30. 
Jefferson, 50. 
Johnson, Andrew, 244. 
Johnson, Reverdy, 242. 
Johnson-Clarendon convention, 

the, 242-244. 

King of the Netherlands, 32, loi, 

109. 
Kitchener, Lord, 301. 
Klondike River, the, 325, 328. 
Kossuth, 363. 
Kruger, 324. 

Laird, 227. 

Lake of the Woods, the, 27, 29, 

31- 

Lancashire, 209, 218. 

Lansdowne, 329. 

Latin America, 155 et seq. 

Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, 324, 339. 

Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, 227. 

Liberal Party, in Great Britain, 
186, 194, 281, 366; in Canada, 
174, 175, 180, 324; on the Conti- 
nent, 150, 363. 

Liberal-Unionists, the, 300. 

Liberalism, 150, 186. 



178 



INDEX 



Lincoln, President, 200, 20i. 205. 

206, 212, 213, 219; death of, 

230, 231; 236. 
Literature, British, 81-S6, IQ7. 

198; growth and influence of 

American, 197. 
Lopez, filibustering expeditions of, 

165. 
Louis Philippie, 149, 151. 
Louisiana, 130. 

Lower Canada, 89; political as- 
pect in, 91, 92; 97, 98, 175. 176. 

:68. 
Loyalists, Canadian, lo-i;. 90. 
Lyons, Lord, 213. 

^L^cdonalJ, Sir John A., 16^. 266, 

269, 274, 2SS. 297. 
McDonough, 8. 

Mackenzie, insurrection of. 93. 173. 
McKinley, President, 324. 
McKinley Bill, the, 2S4, 297, 298. 
McI-cod, Alexander, arni^st of, 95, 

96, 103. 105, 106. loS. 
Madison, 50, 212. 
^L'^gya^s, the, 151, 363. 
Maine boundary dispute, 96, lOl- 

iio, 120. 
^talden. Michigan, 35. 
Malmesbun.', Lord, 171. 
Manchestcrism. 152. 176. 229. 296. 
Manila, 322. 
Manitoba, 271. 
NLmufacturing reforms in Great 

Britain, 64. 
Marcy, Secretary of State. 16S. 
Maritime Pro\-inces, the, 220, 269. 
Martineau. Harriet, 83. 
NLison, James M., 210-21S. 310. 
Mass.ichusetts Historical Society, 

Paxxvdings of. quoted, 56. 
Melbourne. Lord, S8. 103. 
Meiico, 55, I20, 121, 123; w.ir 

with. 134-139; 149. 154. 365. 
Mill, 206. 

Mississippi valley, anti-British feel- 
ing in. 34; influence in American 

Government, 77. 



Monroe. President, 16. 46,47; mes- 
sage as to intervention and col- 
onization, 50-54; 132. 

Monroe Doctrine. 46 .'/ srq.; situa- 
tion that produced. 48. 49; 132, 
i6i, 302-307, 309, 311, 312. 317, 
319, 320, 331, 342, 360, 36S. 

Montreal, 175. 176; manifesto is- 
sued at, 178. 179. 

Morrill tariff of 1S61, 204. 

Mosquito Indians. 155, 161, 163. 

Motley, 197. 

Napier, Lord, 169, 171. 

Napoleon Bonaparte. 9, 10. 

Napoleon HL 151. 166. 221. 

Napoleonic empire. reviv.al of. 150. 

Na\-igation laws, British, 63; re- 
peal of. 1 86. 

Neutrality, ''three rules" regard- 
ing. 251. 252. 256. 

New Brunswick, boundan.- dis- 
pute, 96, loi-iio. 361; 269. 2-0. 

Newfoundland, 269, 270; fisheries 
dispute with, 276. 277. 334-33S. 

New Granada, treaty with. 156. 

New Zealand. 350. 354. 369. 

Nicaragua dispute, the. 155 ft 
srq.; treaty with, 164; 362. 

Nicaragua route, the. 155-15S. 

North ./»n,'r iV.jn R/rir^r. the, 8a. 

Northwest Company, the, 125. 

Nova Scotia, 269, 270. 

O'Connell, Daniel, 66-68, 91. 142, 

143. U5- 

Olney-Pauncefote Treatj-, 335. 

Olney. Secretary of Slate, 301, 
303-30S. 315, 316, 318. 

Ontario, 273. 

Ore^gon, joint occupation of, 37- 
29. 59; 96, 120; immigration to, 
126-129; dispute concerning, 
124-134, 140, 147: treaty, 133, 
134, 231. 250. 362. 

Oregon Trail, the, 126. 129. 

Oswald's map, 110, ill. 



INDEX 



379 



Pakenham, 130. 131. 

Palmerston, Lord, 104. 105, loS, 
121, 147; foreign f>olicy of, 151- 
154; contrasted wntli Polk, 153, 
154; 157, 158. 163. 171. 194. io6. 
:oS, ziz, 227, 22S; deatli of, 229; 
24S, 365, 366. 

Panama, 156. 344. 

Papineau. insurrection of, 92, 173. 

Paris, arbitration tribunal at, 290. 

Parliamentary reform in Great 
Britain, 6S-73. 

Parnell, 281. 

Pauncefote, Sir Julian, 31 8, 329, 

331.332- 
Peel. Sir Robert, 67, 129. 142-144. 

146. 147. 152, 173, 176, 177, 1S3. 
Pcnsacola, Florida. 35, 37. 
Philippines, the, 293. 322. 324, 344, 

347- 

Pierce. 166. 

Poe, Edgar Allan. 197. 

Polk. President, 124, 12S; attitude 
toward the Oregon question, 
130-133; toward acquisition of 
California, 134, 135; contrasted 
witli Palmerston, 153, 154; 156, 
362. 

Prescott, 197. 

Press, the British, Si. 82. 

Pribilof Islands, 2S5. 2S7. 290. 

Prince Edward Island, 269, 270. 

Prince of Wales, 364. 

Protectionism, 76, 77. 

Protective tariff, in the United 
States, 76, 77. 222; abolition of 
British. 143. 144, 176, 1S5. 

Prussia, 48, 231. 

Quarterly Reviert', the. Si. 
Quebec, 269, 273. 325. 
Queen's proclamation of neutral- 
ity, 234. 

Radical party, 43, 52, 61, 62, 70, 

81. 91. 100, 144. 
Reciprocity treaty, 190. 191. 22:. 

223, 251, 262, 26S, 364, 



Reform Bill. British, of 1832, 68- 

70; of 1S67, 230. 
Riel uprising, the, 295. 
Robinson, Frederick John, 39, 58. 
Roebuck, 100, 227. 
Roosevelt. President. 344. 
Root. Sccretar)% 329, 332-336. 
Root-Br)xe conventions, 333-33S 
Rose. Sir John, 265. 
Roseben,-, Lord, 300. 
Rouse's Point, fortress at, 32. 
Rush. Richard, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 

3^. 39. 49- 

Rush-Bagot arrangement, 17, 222, 
325, 360. 

Russell. Lord John, 147. 152, 153; 
on Canadian independence, 1S3- 
1S6; 194, 206. 214, 215, 217, 219, 
229, 230, 232, 234; attitude re- 
garding Jliibama claims, 236- 
240; 243. 248, 365, 366. 

Russia, 48; Pacific coast claims of, 
53-55; war with. 169; 290, 293, 
300. 339. 345, 348- 



Saint Croix River, the. 29-31. 
Saint Mark's, seizure of, %6, 37. 
Salisbury, Lord, 281-284; -^9, 

300, 301, 303, 306-308, 315, 329, 

349. 366. 
Samoan Islands, the, 292, 293. 
San Jacinto. 210. 
San Tuan de Nicaragua, 155, 156 

162. 
San Juan Island, ownership of, 2$ i, 

259, 260. 
Saturday Rrrinc, London. 36S. 
Schomburgk line, the, 303, 304, 

308. 
Schurz. 363. 
Seal-fisheries dispute, 276, 285- 

291, 299. 325, 329. 
Search, right of, 20-22, 39, 72, 73, 

105; discussions concerning, 112- 

119; 169-172. 
Secession. Southern. 200-204. 
Seminole Indians, 36. 



^8o 



INDEX 



Seward, Secretan-, 208, 215-217, 

222, 226, 233. 234, 240. 241, 244, 

245, 249, 253. 
Shenandoah, the, 221. 256. 
Silver, free coinage of, 319. 
"Six Acts," the, 61, 62. 
Slaven,-, 73, 74, 165. 365; British 

hostilit>- to, 204-206. 
Slave-trade, African, 71-75, 105, 

107, 112-119, 170-172, 205. 
Slidell, John, 210-217, 310. 
Smith, Adam, 42, 63, 144. 
Smith, Goldwin, 296, 357. 
Smith, Sydney, 82. 
South Africa. 321, 324, 350, 351, 

354- 355; 369- 

South Pass, the, discover^• of, 126. 

Spain, weakness of authority of, 
in Florida, 35, 36; request for in- 
tervention in behalf of, in Amer- 
ican colonics, 48-51. 

Spanish-American War, 321-323, 
342, 369. 

Spoils system, the, 79-Sl. 

Squier, Mr., 157, 158. 

Stanley, Lord, 173, 241, 243. 

Suez Canal, 332. 

Sumner, Charles, 206, 245-250, 
253. =54; 256. 

Sutter's mill, 362. 

Tariff, protecrive, in the United 
States, 75-77. 283. 297-299. 325, 
339; in Canada. 274, 275; abol- 
ished in Great Britain, 143, 144, 
176, 185. 

Taylor, President, 157. 

Tecumseh, 34, 35. 

Texas, 96; annexation of, 120-124; 
132, 134-137. 362. 

Theodore, King, 225. 

Thompson. Sir John S. D., 290. 

Tigre, island of. 157, 158. 

Times, the London, 216. 

Tocqueville, 83. 

Tories, views of, as to Americans, 
6. 7; 43. 48. 49. 52, 59-62. 65-68, 
81, 87, 142, 144, 146, 173-175; 



Canadian, 178, iSo, 181; 183, 
194, 229. 230, 322, 361, 366. 

Transvaal, the. 314. 

Treaty, of 17S3, 8, 29; of arbitra- 
tion, of 191 1. 341, 342; Clayton- 
Bulwer, 158-165, 330-332, 362; 
commerce and navigation, 39- 
42, 59; Ghent, 1814, 1, 2, 8, 9, 
13, 20. 23, 24, 30, 192, 194, 342, 
359; between Great Britain and 
Venezuela, 316; Hay-Paunce- 
fote, 331; with Honduras, 157, 
164; inshore fisheries draught, 
280, 288; Johnson-Clarendon, 
242-244; London, 1818. 20-29; 
with New Granada, 156; with 
Nicaragua, 164; Olney-Paunce- 
fote, 318-320; Oregon boundar>-, 
1 3 2-1 34, 25 1, 259; of Portsmouth, 
346; Reciprocity, 190. 191, 364; 
Root-Bn,-ce, 333-338; seal fish- 
eries arbitration, 2S9-291 ; Texan 
independence, 121; of Washing- 
ton, 250-254, 259-262, 265. 276, 
366; Webster-Ashburton, 107- 
113. 

Treni affair, the, 210-216, 218, 313. 

Trevelyan, his "Life of John 
Bright" cited, 228. 

Trollope, Mrs., her "Domestic 
Life of the Americans," 84. 

Tupper, Sir Charles, 288, 290. 

Tyler, President, 124, 130. 

United Empire Loyalists, the, 91, 

174- 
Lnited States, weakness and in- 
significance of, in 1812. 3. 4; de- 
mocracy in, 5-7; rejoicing over 
Treaty of Ghent in, 8; difficul- 
ties as to northwestern bound- 
apr" of, 27-32, 130; northeastern 
boundan,- dispute, 110-112. 120, 
242, 361; commercial interests 
of, 39, 40; industrial and polit- 
ical freedom in, 43, 44; Jack- 
sonian democracy in, 46 ft Sfq.: 
policy of, in West India trade 



INDEX 



381 



controversy, 57-59; resentment 
at British attitude toward 
slaver>-, 74; predominant char- 
acteristics of people, 78; public 
opinion in, concerning Great 
Britain, 86, 87; territorial ex- 
pansion, 120 et sfq., 139, 154, 
165, 343, 362; growth of popu- 
lation, 1S40. 139, 140; popular 
sentiment in, in Irish agitation, 
142, 143; Irish and German im- 
migration to, 148, 150; signifi- 
cance of the year 1848, 149 et 
Sfq.; indifference to Canadian 
annexation, 181, 182; reciprocity 
with Canada, 187-191. 340; pop- 
ulation in i860, 192; immigrants 
in i860, 195, 196; influence of 
Irish in. 196, 226; dislike of Brit- 
ish caused by Trftit affair, 216; 
sense of growth and power in, in 
the eighties. 291-293; creation of 
a modern fleet, 292; war with 
Spain popular in, 321; cordial re- 
lations with Great Britain in 
1898, 322-324; controversies 
with Canada, 324-340; diplo- 
matic agreements with Great 
Britain, 1898-190S, 329 ft seq.; 
transformation of political sys- 
tems. 343, 344; activity in world 
politics, 345; imperialism in, 
344-347; home of most of En- 
glish-speaking people, 355; con- 
trasted with British Empire, 
355; influences toward amity 
with Great Britain, 357-371. 



United States Bank, the, 78, 79. 
Upper Canada, 10-13. 16; political 

aspect in, 90, 91; 99, 174, 175, 

26S. 



Van Buren, President, 59, 88, 103. 

Vaughan, 53. 

Venezuela boundarj' controversy. 

299, 301-318, 342, 368. 
Victoria, Queen, 88, 349. 
Visitation, right of, 171, 172. 

Walker's filibusters, 163, 165. 

War of 1812, 139. 

Webster, Daniel, 95; in boundary 
settlement, 105-112, 361; in de- 
bate over right of search, 116- 
119. 

Webster-Ashburton Treaty, the, 
107-113. 

Wellington. Duke of, 2, 60. 66, 67. 

West Indies, commerce with, 57- 
59; abolition of slavery in, 71, 
74; 155, 3-2, 360, 361. 

West, Sir L. S. Sackville, 283. 

Whaling fleet, destruction of, 221. 

Whigs, views of, as to Americans, 
6, 7; 43, 49, 52; reforms of, 60, 
62, 67, 70, 81, 83; 87, 88, 91, 92, 
103, 105, 144, 147, 173, 183, 186, 
194, 202, 229, 361, 366. 

Wilberforce. 71. 

Wilkes, Captain, 210-216. 

William IV, 88. 

Yeo, Sir James, 14. 



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